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Russia is planning to take the legal route to recover its gold and foreign exchange reserves frozen by the countries protesting Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, a TASS report said.

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The announcement was made by the Bank of Russia governor Elvira Nabiullina, who did not provide details on lawsuits.

Nabiullina said: “This freezing of gold and foreign exchange reserves was unprecedented, so we are going to work on legal claims, and we are getting ready to put them forward.

“This block on the gold and foreign exchange reserves of such a large country is unprecedented on a global scale.”

Soon after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a military operation against Ukraine, the US and its allies bombarded Moscow with unprecedented sanctions.

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Russia is said to have over $600bn in foreign currency reserves as dollars, gold, and other currencies and around half of it is subject to asset freeze because of sanctions imposed on the central bank.

The central bank chief noted that the asset freeze had forced them to implement harsher currency regulations.

“If we had these gold and foreign exchange reserves in possession, and had this part not been frozen, there would have been no need for such draconian measures on the movement of capital,” she added.

Separately, the banking regulator told Reuters that it will stop publishing the names of banks that have joined the Russian substitute to the SWIFT interbank payments system.

Several Russian banks were blocked from SWIFT after Russia invaded Ukraine.

Earlier this week, Nabiullina revealed that most Russian banks and 52 entities from other nations had access to Russia’s System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS).