Ukraine cannot return money to Russia - the country is mired in debt
Ukraine simply does not have the funds to pay off its $3 billion debt to Russia, according to the decision of the London High Court. Oleg Ustenko, executive director of the International Blazer Foundation, stated this at a press conference in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
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“We don’t have three billion dollars – just take it and give it to someone. We would like to collect five billion ourselves for our financial stability. Where will we get three billion?
Gold reserves? Yes, formally – $15,5 billion. But the net reserves, the money that we can use, range from $4 to $5 billion. Therefore, where will we get such amounts? Are we going to pull 3 billion out of our net reserves? You understand that we cannot use these ten at all. They seem to be like ours, but not ours either. They lie there as our insurance - that we will continue to make the payments that we must make. We have a lot of debt hanging over us.
The volume of our public debt is 81% of GDP. The cost of its maintenance is 5,5% of GDP. Interest payment only. This year, a country in a state of war must pay 5,5% of GDP to service public and government-guaranteed debt.
I’m not even saying that there are terrible stories - the debt that hangs on Ukrzaliznitsa (everything is extremely unfavorable there), and the debts that hang on the Ukrainian Eximbank, Oschadbank, the debts that hang on Ukravtodor, which are unrestructured and will begin to “shoot” in 2019, we signed up for their implementation.
The London court made this decision and its obvious disadvantage is that we have no money. Even if we really wanted to, we can’t pay for it now,” says the Ukrainian expert.
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