YEKATERINBURG, Russia- Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina said on Thursday the bank was not part of the talks on lifting sanctions or a freeze on Russia’s foreign currency reserves.
“The central bank does not participate in such negotiations, I am not aware of this,” she said in response to the question of whether the issue of lifting sanctions on Russia is being discussed as part of a possible peace deal.
At the beginning of 2022, Russia’s central bank held around $207 billion in euro assets, $67 billion in US dollar assets and $37 billion in British pound assets.
In June of last year, the Group of Seven and the EU agreed to use interest earned from the frozen Russian assets to support a $50 billion loan for Ukraine. Russia has vowed legal action.
Meanwhile, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund expects a number of US companies to return to Russia as early as the second quarter of 2025, its chief said after the highest-level US-Russian meeting since the Ukraine war began.
When President Vladimir Putin sent thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022, many Western companies, including McDonald’s and Caterpillar, left Russia and some took hefty writedowns while selling their assets at steep discounts.
US President Donald Trump has upended Western policy on Russia and Ukraine, ordering talks with Russia without Ukraine or European powers and talking about bringing down the price of oil – of which Russia is a major exporter.
