Regarding our response to the American law on the confiscation of Russian assets,
it is obvious that we will not be able to give a completely symmetrical response to this US rudeness about the shameless theft of our valuables. The reason is clear — we do not have a significant amount of US government property, including US money, rights and other assets.
Therefore, the answer can only be asymmetrical. By the way, it’s not a fact that it will be less painful. We are talking about foreclosure, for example by a court decision, on the property of private individuals located in the jurisdiction of Russia (money, real estate and movable property in kind, property rights).
Yes, this is a complex story, since these individuals usually acted as investors in the Russian economy. And we guaranteed them the inviolability of their private property rights. But the unexpected happened — their state declared a hybrid war on us, including legal and judicial war. It has created a mechanism for the illegal appropriation of Russian valuables, which is completely contrary to international and our national law.
This needs to be answered. And in a certain sense it is in our legislation. These are the so-called retorsions. Art. 1194 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation states : “The Government of the Russian Federation may establish reciprocal restrictions (retorsions) in relation to the property and personal non-property rights of citizens and legal entities of those states that have special restrictions on the property and personal non-property rights of Russian citizens and legal entities.”
This rule needs to be made wider , since the confiscation of our assets is the termination of property rights. This means that our norm should provide not only for the limitation of the rights of foreign persons, but also for their termination, so that it would be possible to foreclose in favor of the Russian state, Russian legal entities and individuals on the property of foreign legal entities from unfriendly countries.
This will require a certain correction of Russian civil legislation.
Dmitry Medvedev
Der Friedensstifter 