Russia's central bank has filed a second claim with the General Court of the European Union, challenging the regulation that allows the bloc to use frozen Russian sovereign assets to repay its loan to Ukraine, the bank announced on Monday.
In its statement, the central bank argued that "the EU's framework challenged by the Bank of Russia treats its sovereign assets as an element of financial support for a third country, altering the legal and economic regime of sovereign assets."
The regulation in question, dated 24 February 2026, stipulates that the EU's loan to Ukraine will be repaid only once Ukraine receives war reparations from Russia for its 2022 invasion, while reserving the EU's right to draw on frozen Russian assets to service that debt in the interim.
The Russian central bank estimates that approximately $300 billion of Russia's sovereign funds have been frozen by Western countries since the invasion of Ukraine. The bulk of those assets are held in Europe, at the Belgian depository Euroclear.
This is not the bank's first legal challenge on the matter. In March, it filed a separate claim with the same court contesting a December 2025 decision to freeze its European assets indefinitely, which it said had been introduced with "serious procedural violations." On 15 May, a Moscow court upheld the central bank's separate domestic claim to recover damages from Euroclear related to the freezing of assets worth 18.17 trillion roubles, equivalent to approximately $253.77 billion at current exchange rates.
