President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has signed a law adopted by the Ukrainian parliament ”On peculiarities of the transactions with the public debt, state-guaranteed debt, and local debt,” which allows to extend for an indefinite period the moratorium on repayment of the so-called `Russian debt.`
The document was sent back to the parliament with the president`s signature, according to a posting on the Verkhovna Rada`s website.
As UNIAN reported earlier, Russia appealed to the High Court of Justice in England with a lawsuit against Ukraine after it had defaulted on the repayment of the principal and interest under a $3 billion loan. Ukraine added the $3 billion eurobond to the sovereign and sovereign-guaranteed bonds to be restructured, but Russia said it did not consider the debt to be commercial.
In the course of negotiations, Russian authorities insisted on better restructuring terms than other creditors, which is prohibited by the bond swap memorandum concluded between Ukraine and the holders of the bonds.
Ukraine has carried out the restructuring of debt under the IMF`s Extended Fund Facility program approved by the IMF Executive Directors in March last year. In December 2015, the IMF decided that the claim arising from the $3 billion eurobond issued by Ukraine on December 24, 2013, and held by Russia`s National Wealth Fund was an official claim for the purposes of the Fund`s policy on arrears to official bilateral creditors. At the same time, the Fund revised its lending policy with respect to debtor countries with payment problems, including Ukraine, enabling the IMF to continue its lending program even in case of non-repayment of Russia`s loan.
After Russia`s refusal to participate in the debt operation, Ukraine on December 18 announced a moratorium on any payments of the Russian debt, including repayment of $3 billion, which was falling due in December 2015.
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