Russia wants to unblock foreign assets in move to get its own holdings back

Russia’s government and the Bank of Russia have drafted a decree on unblocking a chunk of foreign assets to be exchanged for Russian ones, Russia's Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said at a meeting of the Council for strategic development and national projects.

Anton Siluanov stressed that as of today, the assets of more than 3.5 mln Russian citizens worth more than 1.5 trillion rubles have been blocked.

"Considering the decisions you supported, we suggest beginning to exchange our citizens’ assets for the assets of foreign investors which today are stored n C-type accounts. At the first stage, we plan to unblock accounts belonging to retail investors which contain around 100 bln rubles ," Siluanov said.