Ukraine defaults on $3 billion Eurobond to Russian Federation
Storchak told reporters that Ukraine’s move would not change Russia’s plan to take Ukraine to court once the grace period on the debt payment expired.
Yatsenyuk also said Ukraine would cancel payments on $507 million of Ukrainian commercial debt held by Russian banks.
“The December 2015 Eurobonds constitute debt obligations which Ukraine can not pay in accordance with their initial terms”, the ministry said in a statement.
The moratorium would be in place “until the acceptance of our restructuring proposals or the adoption of the relevant court decision …”
“We never said there were not people there who carried out certain tasks, including in the military sphere“, he said, the Guardian reports, when asked by a Ukrainian reporter about two Russian military officers captured by Kyiv and now on trial in Ukraine.
That offer fell through earlier in December, and Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov said on December an out-of-court settlement may be “impossible”.
This week, Putin signed a decree suspending Russia’s free-trade deal with Ukraine as of January 1, the same day Kyiv is set to enter a similar accord with the European Union.
Cash-strapped Kyiv is in dire need of further worldwide funding and was required by the IMF to restructure a total of 15.3 billion of debt to unlock the next installment of the 17.5 billion aid package.
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.
Putin past year acknowledged Russian troops were in Crimea before Moscow seized the Black Sea peninsula from Ukraine, after initially denying it. Germany helped negotiate a fragile truce between the separatists, Russian Federation and the government in Kyiv that has held since September.
It is unclear at this point how Ukraine’s imminent default will affect its four-year International Monetary Fund bailout, as the International Monetary Fund recently said it can continue to lend to countries behind in debt payments as long as the country is trying “in good faith” to reach a deal.