KIEV (Sputnik) — On Thursday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko approved the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine's proposal to impose one-year sanctions on subsidiaries of five Russian state banks, including Sberbank and VTB.
"It is indicative that today's IMF session on Ukraine was postponed, it should be a signal to Kiev authorities. This decision of the IMF is impossible to read as anything other than dissatisfaction with Kiev's latest decisions regarding the branches of Russian banks and the blockade of Donbass," Kosachev said.
Koschev stressed that such actions should not be mixed up with the issue of Ukraine's debt to Russia, which has existed for years and should be discussed under any circumstances.
According to the Ukrainian Finance Ministry, the delay was caused by the need to calculate the consequences from Ukraine's measures used in response to the Donbass blockade.
Kiev launched a special military operation in Ukraine’s southeast in April 2014, after local residents refused to recognize the new Ukrainian authorities. In February 2015, the Minsk peace agreement was signed between Ukraine’s conflicting sides, but the ceasefire has repeatedly been violated.
The situation in Ukraine’s southeast escalated in January, when the fighting between Ukrainian forces and the militia of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics intensified.
