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President Yanukovich: It was Ukraine’s mistake to hope for IMF loans

He reminded that for the past three years the European Union had demanded that Ukraine sign a loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund to be offered a technical assistance worth 610 million

KIEV, November 26, 22:53 /ITAR-TASS/. Ukraine has made a mistake hoping for loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as negotiations of an IMF loan yielded no result, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich said in an interview with Ukrainian leading television channels on Tuesday.

He reminded that for the past three years the European Union had demanded that Ukraine sign a loan agreement with the International Monetary Fund to be offered a technical assistance worth 610 million euro.

“Since 2010, they have been showing us this candy in a bright wrapper and saying: ‘You will get it when you sign an agreement with the International Monetary Fund,’” Yanukovich said. “Do not humiliate us. We are not infants to be mad after sweets. We are a serious European state, and the IMF is telling us: ‘Raise tariffs for the population, freeze wages and pensions’ and so on and so forth. I shall never accept this.”

“Our hopes that the International Monetary Fund will help us have ended in nothing,” he noted. “I personally took part in the negotiations with the International Monetary Fund both in Ukraine and in the United States. We have received a negative answer.

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