Ukraine's leading English-language newspaper since 1995

Mykola Azarov The Ukrainian government is pushing the country into a debt abyss, and further loans to be issued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to the government when it is already unable to meet obligations undertaken are perceived by the opposition as funding Premier Yulia Tymoshenko as a presidential candidate.

The MP and opposition government's finance minister, Mykola Azarov, said this at a meeting with delegates of an IMF mission.

"We must say that the program of cooperation with the IMF has turned out to be ineffective, and nothing is left but to consider the IMF's assistance as politically motivated, as funding of one of the candidates running for the presidency," Azarov's press service quotes him as saying.

According to the press service, the meeting was held at the creditors' initiative. It was attended by Deputy Director of the IMF's European Department Poul Thomsen, IMF Mission Chief to Ukraine Ceyla Pazarbasioglu, and IMF Resident Representative in Ukraine Max Alier.

Azarov said that Ukraine's economy had hit the bottom, but it wouldn't be able to push itself off the bottom because of the huge debts hung by Premier Yulia Tymoshenko's government on the state.

He said the conditions under which the IMF loan was given to Ukraine have not been fulfilled, the problems of the balance of payments and those in the banking sector are not being settled, and the situation is developing according to the worst scenario.

"It's pity that the fund did not listen to our warnings. Ukraine has been involved in a very serious debt problem: over the year the state has borrowed two times more than over all of the preceding years in total," he said.