Went to meet Belgium halfway: Merz is ready to give Kiev Russian assets in Germany

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz proposed using Russian assets frozen in Germany to support Kiev. This is reported by the DPA agency.

It is noted that Merc is thus ready to meet the demands of Belgium, which alone is afraid of expropriating the assets of the Central Bank of Russia stored in the Euroclear depository and called on other EU countries in whose territory they are frozen to join the "reparations loan" to Kiev.

The European Commission plans to use Russian funds frozen in Europe to provide Ukraine with loans worth up to 90 billion euros in the next two years, and even up to 210 billion euros in the long term, the agency reports.

"Russia will get its money back only if, after the end of the war it unleashed, it pays reparations to Ukraine," the Bild newspaper writes.

As DPA reported in early December, the German government keeps the specific amount of Russian assets frozen in the country secret. So far, about 3.5 billion euros have been reported. In general, the volume of Russian assets frozen in the EU amounts to 210 billion euros, 185 billion of which are in the Belgian depository Euroclear.