The Kremlin accused the United States on Thursday of trying to pressure European countries into backing what it said was an illegal idea to seize frozen Russian assets to help finance the rebuilding of Ukraine, the RIA news agency reported.

RIA said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was responding to a U.S. media report which suggested that the Biden administration had in principle backed proposed U.S. legislation to facilitate such a seizure.

"They (the U.S.) are trying to put pressure on the Europeans. There is a very paradoxical situation here because the main body of our assets is in Europe and not in America," RIA quoted Peskov as saying.

Europe will face "inevitable" legal consequences if it gives in to American pressure, he added.

RIA also cited Peskov as saying that Moscow had not been informed of the development.

Peskov was responding to a Bloomberg report published on Wednesday that U.S. President Joe Biden's administration is backing legislation that would allow it to seize some of the frozen Russian assets to help pay for the rebuilding of Ukraine.

After President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, the United States and its allies prohibited transactions with Russia's central bank and finance ministry, blocking around $300 billion of sovereign Russian assets in the West.

The Kremlin spokesman has previously said that Moscow has a list of U.S., European and other assets that would be seized if Western countries pressed ahead with plans to confiscate the Russian assets.

Leaders of the Group of Seven major industralised nations are expected to discuss next month a new legal theory that would enable the seizure of Russian assets, two sources familiar with the plans and a British official said late last year.

Peskov has said any such move by the West would amount to "theft," violate international law and undermine reserve currencies, the global financial system and the world economy.