Greece and Malta lag behind their European Union peers in freezing Russian assets sanctioned over Moscow's war against Ukraine, an article by Reuters citing an EU official and an internal document read.

But the government of Malta has defended its actions. Contrary to international reports, "Malta has been since February 2022 working assiduously to identifying assets belonging to listed individuals and entities under the EU Russia sanctions regime," a spokesperson for the Malta Foreign Affairs Ministry told The Malta Independent.

"As a result a number of assets were found within the Maltese jurisdiction, namely €222,470 as well as millions that are currently located abroad," the spokesperson said.

Reuters News agency reports that the 27 EU countries have so far reported freezing some 20.3 billion euros ($22 billion) of sanctioned Russian assets, with Italy, Ireland, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg and Austria each notifying more than a billion euros.

Almost every other EU country has frozen millions worth of assets, according to the document from the EU's executive European Commission seen by Reuters. Greece and Malta defended their work on sanctions. Greece confirmed it had notified the bloc of freezing assets worth 212,000 euros. Malta said it had frozen 222,000 euros worth, compared with 147,000 euros in the EU document, the Reuters report said.

"That is a bit surprising," said the EU official, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity. "Either they don't have much, or they are not doing their job. Or they have done something but not communicated to us even though they had chances."

Responding to questions by The Malta Independent, a Maltese Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson said: "Both the public and the private sectors have been very thorough in their search for assets of listed individuals or entities and this exercise remains an ongoing one."

"Malta has also been proactively assisting other member states in identifying problematic assets. It is also worth noting that a number of assets belonging to listed individuals or entities (example registered in Malta but physically elsewhere) have been seized and frozen by other EU Member States, through mutual cooperation. Furthermore, there have been a number of Court judgments pronounced by European Courts which related to assets registered in Malta and belonging to Maltese companies whose Ultimate Beneficial Owner is listed which were sold and the proceeds of such assets have been also frozen in bank accounts outside of Malta but within the European Union. A lot of work has been invested by Malta in support of the common European efforts. Moreover, recent data shows a significant decrease in trade between Malta and Russia, which attests to Malta's commitment to implement EU decisions," the Maltese spokesperson said.

An official with the Greek authorities told Reuters that the €212,000 exhausted all the assets Athens identified based on the EU sanctions list. "Greece's investment environment does not favour the inflow of Russian capital and offshore companies," the Greek official added.

Malta last March had stopped the sale of passports to applicants from Russia and Belarus.

The EU's current president Sweden on Wednesday had said that any new sanctions against Russia could include more individual listings.

The attention of the EU is also turning onto whether to use frozen Russian assets to assist in rebuilding Ukraine.