IMF support for Ukraine hinges on Russian assets loan, EU warns

https://www.politico.eu/article/imf-ukraine-russia-loan-eu-financial-support-war-economy/

Posted by CourtofTalons

2 comments

  1. Just for clarity, it appears that this is a warning and speculation coming from EU members, not IMF itself:

    >European supporters of the controversial €140 billion “reparations loan,” backed by Russian state assets frozen in the EU, argue the IMF’s continued support for Ukraine is crucial, and fear time is running out to convince the institution to grant new loans to Kyiv.

    The more interesting bit from the article is that “a crucial IMF meeting that is likely to be held in December” appears to happen **before** the EU’s next summit in December where the EU hopes to agree on a resolution for the reparations loan.

  2. Isn’t it a loan in name only though? The pay back condition is Russia paying reparations, which even if the war ends isn’t going to happen. And the russian assets are only being used as collateral, but the EU has already made it clear that they do not want to actually touch the russian assets, so it’s not really a collateral because it’s unlikely to be used. So in reality it’s just a several hundred billion euro gift.

    Wouldn’t it be better to just skip the russian asset rigamarole and just give Ukraine a no interest loan?

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