Bloomberg quotes Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center Resident Senior Fellow Anders Aslund and Global Business and Economics Program Director Andrea Montanino on Russia’s attempts to block the International Monetary Fund’s next loan payment to Ukraine:
Russia’s protests over the $3 billion bond are unlikely to be heeded by the IMF, said Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “This is the kind of thing you say when you don’t have an argument,” he said. “The trouble lies elsewhere,” Aslund said, citing domestic resistance to the Ukraine government’s efforts to broaden the country’s tax base as an example of something that represents a greater challenge to the IMF program.
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While voting against or even abstaining from an IMF lending program is a rare move, Russia probably doesn’t have the support among other member nations, even prospective allies like China, to block the Ukraine program, said Andrea Montanino, a member of the fund’s executive board from 2012 to 2014.
“Russia will be isolated,” said Montanino, now director of the Atlantic Council’s global business and economics program in Washington.