A top Russian government spokesman has warned the West against attempts to confiscate frozen Russian assets, and threatened potential retaliation.
The possibility of seizing Russian assets has been under discussion in the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union, with some calling for using the money to fund aid - or even weapons - for Ukraine.
On Sunday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested that Moscow could seize foreign assets in Russia if any move is made to seize Russian assets abroad.
"It goes without saying that Russia will use these legal avenues and defend its interests to the full," said Peskov in an interview on Russian television.
He also warned that the West could lose the trust of other foreign investors if Russian assets are touched.
"Reliability disappears overnight because of a stupid, ill-considered decision," Peskov said.
Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Russian National Bank assets were frozen in the EU and elsewhere following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
A current EU proposal would not expropriate the underlying assets, but would give the income from the assets to Ukraine.
"Russian assets must not be touched, otherwise there will be a harsh response to this Western theft," Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a post on Telegram.
"And many in the West have already understood this. Unfortunately, not all of them," she wrote.