Western countries cannot fulfill their own sanctions and block two-thirds of the reserves of the Russian Central Bank. Because no one knows where they are.

After the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, the G7 countries decided to block Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserves located abroad, which were estimated at $300 billion. But in the end, less than a third of this amount was arrested, and the rest was simply not found. This is reported by the Atlantic Council analytical center, working under NATO.

Now officials are trying to find the remaining reserves or the Russian institution that owns them. At the same time, analysts say, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation does not make the task easier - the last time the regulator published a report on the structure of its reserves in January and has not updated it since.

Thus, the Atlantic Council notes, the statement about the freezing of Russian reserves is not accurate. Moreover, it has now become clear that the countries imposing sanctions do not always know exactly what assets they are trying to block.