{"id":144927,"date":"2015-03-24T04:25:31","date_gmt":"2015-03-24T04:25:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=144927"},"modified":"2016-11-30T04:21:27","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T03:21:27","slug":"imf-ukraine-must-now-steal-1-5-billion-from-russia-to-buy-needed-arms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/editorials\/imf-ukraine-must-now-steal-1-5-billion-from-russia-to-buy-needed-arms\/","title":{"rendered":"(WARNING GRAPHIC IMAGE) IMF: Ukraine Must Now Steal $1.5B+ from Russia to Buy Arms"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de\/2015\/03\/24\/iwf-ukraine-soll-seine-schulden-an-russland-nicht-zurueckzahlen\/<\/a><\/p>\n

IMF: Ukraine will not pay back [part of] its debts to Russia<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

German Economic News<\/i><\/a><\/span> |\u00a0\u00a0Published: 03\/24\/15 00:25 clock [Translation, and interspersed notes, by Eric Zuesse.]<\/span><\/p>\n

In December, a multi-billion-dollar loan [variously stated as $3-$3.5 billion] to Ukraine comes due, which Ukraine had received from Russia.\u00a0The IMF has provided a\u00a0new debt plan, however, dictating that\u00a0existing loans to Ukraine that have an expiration-date are to be subjected to a haircut.\u00a0Thus, the resource gap of the country totaling $40 billion is to be reduced.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Since the crisis, Ukraine has received several loans\u00a0from the IMF\u00a0and\u00a0the EU [and the U.S.].\u00a0These loans\u00a0must be\u00a0repaid in a few years from now.\u00a0However, the financial situation of the country remains vulnerable.\u00a0Over the next four years overdue loans totaling $15 billion need to be paid [they\u2019re mostly loans from Russia].\u00a0Only three billion of\u00a0them are an old loan Russia that has to be paid in December of this year.\u00a0The IMF might\u00a0prevent it [from being repaid in full, even though it has seniority over the new loans that are coming from the West].<\/span><\/p>\n

The IMF has developed a program for Ukraine, under which the current financial hole is to be\u00a0filled in the amount $40 billion.\u00a0The due debts [the senior debt] are part of the plan, and will be\u00a0restructured, according to the IMF.\u00a0Exactly how it is to happen, the IMF does not explain.\u00a0Experts say that the IMF\u00a0believes that Russia should participate in a haircut. The Financial Times reports [“Bailout projections indicate Ukraine will not repay Russia debt\u201d<\/span><\/a> 5:21 PM, 22 March 2015] that\u00a0the IMF\u00a0requires that Russia’s $3.5 billion bond issue be included in the restructuring.\u00a0Charles Blitzer, a former IMF employee, has informed the FT of this.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, Blitzer is uncertain how large the haircut will be.\u00a0“It\u00a0is up to the Ukrainian authorities to determine the extent and nature of the debt restructuring,\u201d\u00a0he said.\u00a0[In other words: the IMF will grant Ukraine the right to determine how much of that $3-3.5B will be repaid to Russia. The Kyiv Post puts it this way<\/span><\/a>: \u201cKyiv does not intend to fully repay a $3 billion bond owed to Russia this year according to official projections underpinning Ukraine’s new international bailout, say credit experts.\u201d]\u00a0Government sources close to the matter estimate that there will be a planned\u00a0debt reduction of 50 percent.\u00a0“But creditors would rather try to agree on a term extension,\u201d said Blitzer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether all\u00a0international creditors will accept a haircut,\u00a0and if so, to what extent, is not yet clear.\u00a0Last week, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanow said that Russia still expects that the $3.5B debt\u00a0will be repaid this December in full.\u00a0And Franklin Templeton [Funds], the\u00a0largest bondholder\u00a0of Ukraine, has brought in Blackstone legal help for debt negotiations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last week, the Ukrainian Finance Minister [the American] Natalija Jaresko told the\u00a0WSJ\u00a0that so far pledged loans to Ukraine [$40B] will not be enough to bring Ukraine back onto its feet.\u00a0“The package will\u00a0stabilize the banking system, but it is not enough to seriously re-stimulate growth,” said Jaresko.\u00a0“I need more support.\u201d She said that no nation currently pays more to protect the entire world from a nuclear\u00a0power [Russia] than does Ukraine, and that, “if our partners, for whatever reason, are not able to assist us with defensive military means, then they should provide us more financial assistance [so that we can buy the weapons against Russia ourselves].”<\/span><\/p>\n

This past\u00a0Friday, the Ukrainian central bank had\u00a0to explain why three of Ukraine’s banks were being declared insolvent.\u00a0The VAB Bank, Astra Bank and the City Commerce Bank are now deprived of their licenses.\u00a0At the\u00a0same time, Ukraine is already planning an expansion of military resources.\u00a0In sum, for the year of 2015,\u00a0a total of $3.8 billion\u00a0will be spent on armaments. [This by a country that cannot even pay its bondholders, when all of the new Ukrainian bonds are actually paying only for Ukraine\u2019s war against the residents of its own former Donbass region<\/span><\/a>.]<\/span><\/p>\n

———-<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of\u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>, and\u00a0of\u00a0Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/deutsche-wirtschafts-nachrichten.de\/2015\/03\/24\/iwf-ukraine-soll-seine-schulden-an-russland-nicht-zurueckzahlen\/ IMF: Ukraine will not pay back [part of] its debts to Russia German Economic News |\u00a0\u00a0Published: 03\/24\/15 00:25 clock [Translation, and interspersed notes, by Eric Zuesse.] In December, a multi-billion-dollar loan [variously stated as $3-$3.5 billion] to Ukraine comes due, which Ukraine had received from Russia.\u00a0The IMF has provided a\u00a0new debt plan, however, dictating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":115784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,32,96,535,841,59,524,523,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-144927","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-imf","15":"tag-military","16":"tag-russia","17":"tag-ukraine","18":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}