Ukraine imposes moratorium on repaying $3 billion Russian bond – PM

President Vladimir Putin on Thursday went further than ever before in discussing Russia’s role in Ukraine’s separatist insurgency, with a comment on the deployment of operatives that North Atlantic Treaty Organisation said was an acknowledgment of the Kremlin’s military involvement in the conflict.

Ukraine’s economy has struggled over the past few years and the country has negotiated repayment terms with creditors, but not with Russian Federation. Payments are frozen “until our proposals on restructuring are accepted or until a relevant court decision is made”, he said.

“But that doesn’t mean that there are regular Russian troops there”.

Storchak said Ukraine had no chance of winning in court.

The Guardian reported that Putin was responding to a Ukrainian reporter’s question on the capture and trial of two Russian military officers in Kiev, at a press conference in Moscow.

“We have stated again and again that Russian Federation is present with military personnel in eastern Ukraine and that is based on our own intelligence sources”, Stoltenberg said as he met Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at North Atlantic Treaty Organisation headquarters in Brussels.

“Ultimately, the problem of any lender is that he is interested in the economic growth of its borrower”, he said. But the Fund has balanced this by changing its policy to allow it to keep lending to countries in arrears on repayments of such debt, effectively throwing Ukraine a borrowing lifeline.

Ukraine’s finance ministry sounded a more conciliatory note than Yatseniuk, saying in a statement: “Ukraine remains committed…to negotiating in good faith a consensual restructuring of the December 2015 Eurobonds”. That move could jeopardize crucial loans that Ukraine has been receiving from a $17.5 billion bailout deal with the International Monetary Fund.

It said the deliveries will be paid for out of a $300 million (277 million euro) loan granted by the EBRD to cover the purchase of around one billion cubic metres of gas from Europe.