Bloomberg: Kremlin wants to block Kiev's next IMF payment

November 11, Kiev. At stake is the question of Kiev receiving the next payment of $ 1.7 billion from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Bloomberg correspondent Andrei Mayeda reports. The Kremlin is exploring the possibility of blocking further lending by the fund to Ukraine if the latter defaults on US $ 3 billion Eurobonds to Russia.

Kiev offered Moscow to restructure the debt taken by the government of Mykola Azarov in 2013, on terms for private creditors, refusing to recognize it as state.

According to the current IMF rules, a country that has defaulted on public debt cannot expect to receive a loan. However, recently it became known that the fund plans to change these rules in the near future, which will remove possible formal obstacles to the continuation of lending to Kiev, if it does not repay its debts to Moscow in December this year.

According to a Moscow source Bloomberg, the Kremlin has not yet made a final decision on its actions with respect to the IMF, but in any case, Moscow intends to show the fund participants that Kiev is unable to service its debts.

"The Kremlin can enlist the support of large creditor countries, such as China and Saudi Arabia, which will oppose innovations in the IMF's policy on official debts of borrowing countries," Bloomberg writes.

The vote of the IMF members, which is fateful for the Kiev authorities, will take place in November. As a result, the government of Arseniy Yatsenyuk may face a difficult choice: either pay the country the aggressor $ 3 billion in debt or be left without financial support from the IMF.

The IMF gave Ukraine $ 5 billion in March this year and $ 1.7 billion in August. The next tranche was supposed to pass on September 15, but the fund's auditors completed their verification mission in Kiev only on October 2.