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Russia won't agree to restructure Ukraine's $3bln debt — minister

Russia will continue demanding full repayment of the $3bln loan from Kiev in December

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov TASS/Sergei Fadeichev

Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov

© TASS/Sergei Fadeichev

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Kiev refuses to offer Moscow better debt restructuring terms

MOSCOW, August 27. /TASS /. Russia will continue to demand a full repayment of the $3 bln loan from Ukraine in December, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Thursday in an interview with Rossiya TV channel.

"We won’t accept the restructuring or any changes in the rules of provision of funds from the National Wealth Fund. We will continue demanding that Ukraine should fully meet the commitments it made. We will strongly demand a full repayment of $3 bln in December together with the relevant interest," the Minister said.

Earlier on Thursday, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said at an extraordinary cabinet meeting that Ukraine had agreed with foreign creditors on debt restructuring, which involves a 20% write-off of the Ukrainian debt. According to Yatsenyuk, Russia has not joined to the creditors' committee. "We declare that Russia will not receive other conditions," he said.

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In her turn, Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko added that Ukraine had agreed to write off $3.8 billion of $19.3 billion debt. The repayment of the loan postponed for 4 years.

According to the Russian Finance Minister, Ukraine reached that agreement with commercial creditors, but Russia is an official lender and the restructuring program is not applied to it.

"We regard ourselves as official creditors. They meant first of all the settlement of debt to commercial creditors, while the settlement of debt to official creditors, with countries like Russia, is a separate issue," the Minister said.

Siluanov added that the Russia may invest the funds it expects from Ukraine in national infrastructure projects.

Russia took a tough stance on the possibility of easing the payments terms for Ukraine and consistently refused to negotiate on restructuring programs offered by Kiev.

Moscow expects a full repayment of the loan worth $3 billion in December 2015. In late June, Ukraine made a payments worth $75 mln to Russia in compliance with the schedule.

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