Putin says Russia is seizing Western assets in response to European moves
Putin says Germany and other European countries have seized Russian assets and that Moscow is matching those moves.
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UpdateThursday, October 1, 2026 at 1:33 PM ET
Putin says Russia does not nationalize foreign assets, and that foreign owners "will get assets back in a good scenario."
Putin says several European countries, including Germany, are seizing Russian assets, and that Russia is responding in kind. He did not detail which assets on either side are involved.
The statement comes as the European Union weighs a plan to redirect revenue from frozen Russian reserves to Ukraine, a plan the Kremlin has already called illegal. Putin's confirmation of reciprocal seizures takes the dispute a step further than that plan, into direct tit-for-tat action over property rather than revenue.
The exchange sits alongside a wider standoff that has not moved in weeks. Putin says Russia is ready to resume arms control talks with the United States, though that offer covers arms control alone and stops short of the broader Ukraine peace process under discussion this month. NATO chief Mark Rutte has called the alliance purely defensive and told Russia to drop talk of nuclear escalation, after weeks of nuclear and Article 5 rhetoric tied to Kaliningrad that has not been matched by any Russian military move. The Kremlin has said its diplomats will remind European counterparts of the continent's founding treaties.
For companies and investors with remaining exposure in Russia, the retaliation raises the legal and financial stakes beyond the EU's own asset plan. It signals that Moscow will treat any further Western move against its frozen assets as grounds for retaliation rather than as leverage to be negotiated away, adding friction to the sanctions standoff without shifting the separate, unresolved question of a possible Trump-Putin summit.