Russia will take legal action to protect its assets against a court ruling ordering compensation for shareholders in the defunct oil and gas firm Yukos, President Vladimir Putin says.
Moscow has protested to Belgium over its seizure of state assets in response to the ruling, which it described as "an openly hostile act" that "crudely violates the recognised norms of international law".
France has seized Russian state accounts in about 40 banks, along with eight or nine buildings. Lawyers for Yukos shareholders have also filed applications seeking similar action in Britain and the United States.
An international arbitration court in The Hague ordered Russia last year to pay the shareholders about Stg32 billion ($A65 billion) in compensation, after ruling that officials had manipulated the legal system to bankrupt Yukos and jail its oligarch boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
But Putin insists Russia is not subject to the court's rulings and will fight to ensure the return of its assets. Russia has launched an appeal against the judgment, which was the largest arbitration ruling in history.
Speaking to news agencies in St Petersburg, the Russian president said: "Definitely there must be a reaction on our side.
"We believe that in cases like that, the arbitration court is only competent in relation to those countries that have signed and ratified the European energy charter. Russia has not ratified the charter, so we don't recognise the jurisdiction of that court. We are going to prove it through judicial proceedings.
"The fact that Yukos stakeholders are trying to get extra money from Russia is not surprising. There is nothing new about it, we have seen it before.
"We will be dealing with it based on the international legal process. We are going to protect our interests."
Lawyer Tim Osborne, who represents the Yukos shareholders, told the BBC: "The Russian state has made no effort to pay or engage with us - all of its statements and actions suggest it has no regard for international law or the rule of law."
Seizures so far had involved bank accounts and real estate, but could later be applied to state companies, he suggested.
Yukos was acquired by a bank controlled by Khodorkovsky during the controversial sell-off of state assets under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. It grew into one of the biggest and most successful companies in Russia and Khodorkovsky became the country's richest man and an advocate of democratisation and reform.
In 2003, he was arrested and jailed over allegations of unpaid taxes and over the following years the firm was broken up and its assets transferred to several state-owned companies.
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