A century-old Russian debt is being hauled into a modern sanctions fight, as a US investment fund asks a federal judge to let it collect on Tsarist-era bonds by seizing Russian state assets frozen in America.
Noble Capital RSD, a US-based fund, has filed a lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia seeking more than $225bn, arguing that the Russian Federation remains liable for sovereign debt issued by the Russian Empire in 1916 and repudiated after the Bolshevik revolution.
The claim centres on $25m in imperial bonds sold in December 1916 through a banking syndicate led by what is now Citibank, according to reporting on the lawsuit. The bonds carried a 5.5 per cent interest rate and matured in 1921. Noble Capital says Russia should now be held responsible not only for the principal, but for more than 100 years of accrued interest.
Crucially, the fund’s lawyers are urging the court to allow recovery from Russian sovereign assets blocked in the United States under sanctions imposed after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The argument, as reported, is that enforcing a private judgment against frozen property would be different in character from a political decision to confiscate state reserves.
Russia has not publicly commented on the substance of the claim, but the US law firm Marks & Sokolov has said it is representing Moscow and has questioned whether “century-old” debt instruments repudiated long ago can still be enforced.
The next court deadline is close. A judge moved the date by which Russia must respond to the allegations to 29 January 2026.
While the Noble Capital case is being pursued in Washington, Moscow has opened a much larger front in Europe, targeting Euroclear, the Brussels-based clearing house that holds the biggest share of Russian central bank reserves immobilised by EU sanctions.
On 16 January, a Moscow court began hearing the Russian central bank’s lawsuit against Euroclear, a claim Reuters put at $235bn. Proceedings were held behind closed doors and the case was adjourned until the spring. Euroclear had sought to have the claim dismissed and asked for more time to review arguments for secrecy.
Russian central bank is seeking compensation for being barred from managing roughly €193bn of assets held at Euroclear.
The figures matter because they show where the real money sits. Western sanctions froze about €210bn of Russian sovereign assets in Europe after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, with Euroclear holding the largest portion.
In December 2025, the EU agreed to keep Russian central bank assets immobilised indefinitely, removing a rolling renewal point that had been treated as a vulnerability. The Russian central bank condemned any direct or indirect use of its assets as illegal and contrary to sovereign immunity principles.
Together, the two cases sketch a tightening legal ring around the same prize: the frozen reserves that Moscow wants back and Ukraine’s supporters want to tap.
The strategies point in opposite directions, but they meet at the same pressure point.
Noble Capital is attempting to convert a historic debt claim into an order reaching modern blocked assets. Russia, through its central bank, is trying to raise the cost of holding those assets by suing the institution that safeguards them and, in Reuters’ reporting, signalling that it could pursue seizure of Euroclear property in “friendly” jurisdictions if it wins.
The timing also intersects with politics in Washington. President Donald Trump began his second term on 20 January 2025, and his administration is now operating in a landscape where sanctions enforcement, peace diplomacy and Ukraine finance are competing priorities.
That has fed a broader question: whether Moscow’s legal pressure is designed to influence US decision-making, including by making the frozen-asset debate harder to manage domestically. On the available public record, there is no evidence in the reported court filings that links the Noble Capital lawsuit to the Kremlin, or that it is part of a coordinated attempt to confer any improper personal benefit on US political figures. What can be said, based on the litigation itself and the surrounding policy debate, is that private-law claims and state retaliation suits are multiplying around the immobilised reserves, creating more pathways for courts to become involved.
For European governments, Euroclear is the operational centre of gravity. Brussels has sought to avoid outright confiscation of Russian principal, leaning instead on schemes that use interest and other proceeds generated by immobilised reserves. The EU’s December move to prohibit transfers of immobilised Russian central bank assets back to Russia was presented as an urgent economic safeguard, but it also entrenched the standoff that has now reached the Moscow courts.
For the United States, the Noble Capital case adds a different complication. Even if the claim fails, it tests whether frozen sovereign property could become the target of private judgments, a route that would shift part of the political burden from governments to courts.
In both Washington and Moscow, the lawsuits are now running on judicial timetables. Russia’s response in the US case is due on 29 January. The Euroclear claim will resume in the spring. The sums at stake differ, but the underlying struggle is the same: who can turn frozen Russian wealth into spendable money, and under what legal cover.
