Ukraine Declines To Pay $3 Billion Debt To Russia: PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk
The moratorium means that Ukraine is likely to default on the debt, which is due on Sunday.
Putin said Russia had no regular troop presence in eastern Ukraine but, in response to a question about Russian servicemen detained and injured in the fighting, he admitted that “certain matters, including in the military area” were being performed. Moscow has previously said it will take Ukraine to court if it failed to pay on time.
“We are prepared for court action from the Russian side”, Yatseniuk said.
It’s the latest spat between the two neighbors following a run of gas supply disputes, Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and its support for separatists in eastern Ukraine.
“This is absolutely incorrect”, Peskov said after a journalist asked him if it was possible to say that Russian military specialists were present in southeast Ukraine at some point of the conflict there.
The default “is just confirmation of the unimproved relations between the countries”, said Simon Quijano-Evans, the London-based chief emerging-market strategist at Commerzbank.
Officials in Kyiv argue that the loan is not a sovereign one granted by a state to another and is subject to terms agreed of an agreement with its other creditors, but Moscow says it can not be considered private debt and has refused such conditions. On Friday the International Monetary Fund warned that the program was under threat from apparent rejection by parliament of critical tax amendments and the draft 2016 budget.
The decision came after an European Union summit in Brussels where Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi wanted to discuss the sanctions, imposed on Moscow past year over the Ukraine conflict, before extending them.
Ukraine has included the two-year bond in the external commercial debt it is restructuring to shore up its war-torn economy.
Moscow and Kyiv have been locked in a bitter showdown over Russia’s 3 billion loan granted to the pro-Moscow regime of ex-president Viktor Yanukovych in December 2013, not long before he was ousted and fled to Russian Federation.
