From: slider@anashram.com   
      
   LONDON -Russia should confiscate property owned by Westerners in response   
   to a proposal by U.S. President Joe Biden to transfer the frozen assets of   
   Russia’s elite to Ukraine, Russia’s most senior lawmaker said on Sunday.   
      
   Biden on Thursday stepped up support for Ukraine, asking Congress for $33   
   billion to help Kyiv, and to allow the U.S. state to seize more assets   
   owned by Russian oligarchs and give the proceeds to Ukraine.   
      
   Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said the sumptuous yachts and villas of   
   Russia’s oligarchs had not helped Russian development but that the West   
   appeared to be engaged in simple “theft”.   
      
   “It is right to take mirror measures towards businesses in Russia whose   
   owners come from unfriendly countries where such measures were taken:   
   confiscate these assets,” Volodin, who often voices the Kremlin’s views,   
   wrote on his Telegram channel.   
      
   “The proceeds from the sale should be used for the development of our   
   country,” he said. “A dangerous precedent has been created: it should hit   
   the ‘States like a boomerang.”   
      
   Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine prompted the United States and its   
   allies to impose the most severe sanctions in modern history on Russia and   
   Moscow’s business elite, steps President Vladimir Putin casts as a   
   declaration of economic war.   
      
   Putin has repeatedly cautioned that Moscow will respond in kind, though   
   thus far the Kremlin’s toughest economic response has been to cut off gas   
   supplies to Poland and Bulgaria and demand a new payment scheme for   
   European buyers of gas.   
      
   After the West imposed sanctions on Russia, the $1.8 trillion economy is   
   heading for the biggest contraction since the years following the 1991   
   fall of the Soviet Union amid soaring inflation.   
      
   A significant transfer of Russian assets has begun, as the Russian state   
   gains even more influence over the economy, many major Western investors –   
   such as energy giants BP and Shell – exit, and oligarchs try to   
   restructure their business empires.   
      
   As so many Western owners either sold their Russian stakes or shuttered   
   their businesses, it was not immediately clear which specific assets in   
   Russia could be under threat.   
      
   Russia has proposed putting companies that have left Russia into external   
   administration, and Kremlin chief Putin has said Russia will now look   
   eastwards to China and other countries after what he casts as the West’s   
   perfidy.   
      
   Volodin singled out Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and the United States as   
   countries which were engaged in the “theft” of Russian assets.   
      
   https://www.euronews.com/2022/05/02/us-ukraine-crisis-russia-duma   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)