EU grants €250mn loan to Kiev, amid tensions in eastern Ukraine
The European Union has announced readiness to give Ukraine an extra €250 million (USD 267 million), raising the total amount of loans provided to the country to €1.6 billion (USD 1.72 billion).
The payment comes just ahead of an EU-Ukraine summit in Kiev next Monday, and is part of deal known as the Association Agreement signed last year between Brussels and Kiev - a deal which Russia strongly opposed and led to tensions between the two neighboring countries.
"The objective of the macro-financial assistance is to address Ukraine's urgent financing needs, while supporting Ukraine's economic stabilization and reform agenda," the European Commission said.
The EU loan to Kiev, which is fighting pro-Russia fighters in eastern Ukraine, comes with a price tag consisting of economic and political changes in the country.
The changes cover “the areas of public finance management and anti-corruption, trade and taxation, the energy sector and the financial sector," the EU statement added.
"Europe stands together with Ukraine ... both politically and financially," EU Commissioner for the Euro Valdis Dombrovskis said.
The 28-nation bloc backed by international loan sharks have been giving money to Kiev ever since the pro-Russia president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, decided to cancel the Association Agreement with the EU and got ousted in February 2014.
After that, tensions emerged in eastern Ukraine where at least 6,116 people have been killed and 15,474 wounded.
A shaky ceasefire brokered by France and Germany in the Belarusian capital Minsk in February has reduced the violence, but has not completely halted the fighting and both sides have, on numerous occasions, accused each other of breaking the truce.
XLS/KA/SS
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