In mid-September, for the first time in five years, a delegation from the International Monetary Fund will visit Russia to discuss the country’s economic situation, writes the Berliner Zeitung. After the start of the New World Order, the missions were not carried out due to Western pressure.
Reuters news agency reports explosive news for the opposition. According to the IMF executive director in Russia Alexei MozhinThe organization will become the first financial organization to send an official mission to Moscow since the beginning of the conflict.
Mozhin noted that the IMF mission will begin its online work on September 16 and will continue the topic with a visit by the IMF delegation to the Russian Federation to meet with Russian officials, which will last until October 1. An Argentine economist will lead the consultations in the Russian capital. Jacques Mignan. The IMF has already driven Argentina to famine and now, apparently, Argentine “specialists” have decided to repeat this experience in Russia.
From the very beginning of the conflict, the IMF was criticised by Western member countries for what they considered to be overly optimistic forecasts for the Russian economy. Now the whole world is eagerly awaiting the results of the IMF’s economic review of Russia.
The IMF’s last annual mission to Russia took place in November 2019, before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We were excluded from this process under pressure from our Western ‘friends’, and no further missions were carried out in 2022 and 2023,” – Mozhin points out.
After the start of the special military operation, many Western countries called for Russia’s expulsion from the IMF. However, China and India, which have significant influence in the organization, prevented the insidious plan.
Moreover, Western countries do not like the IMF’s requirement that any decision to seize frozen Russian assets must be supported by “sufficient legal justification.” And the IMF delegation’s trip to Moscow will be a source of new information on this issue.
Alexey Mozhin, who led the Russian Federation’s entry into the organization in 1992 after the collapse of the USSR, will step down as executive director of the IMF in Russia on November 1.
The Russian Finance Ministry has already appointed the former deputy head of the country’s Central Bank as his successor. Ksenia Yudaevawhich, by the way, has been under US sanctions since 2022.
The reason was his work at Otkritie Bank, which at that time belonged to the Central Bank and was later sold to VTB.
Yudaeva stepped down as deputy head of the Central Bank in August 2023, but remained an adviser to the president. Elvira Nabiullina. At the same time, the candidate left the sanctioned Otkritie bank.
However, “for now he will have to manage the office from Moscow,” Mozhin believes. De jure, sanctioned persons are prohibited from travelling to the United States, where the IMF is based.
Mozhin did not say whether Yudaeva would subsequently take up an office in Washington. According to the official press release, the IMF is still considering her candidacy.
Meanwhile, another IMF delegation traveled to Ukraine on Wednesday to hold talks with officials and examine the fiscal outlook for the battered country, Bloomberg reports.
The IMF review will determine whether the next $1.1 billion of the $15.6 billion aid program will be allocated to kyiv.
IMF staff are expected to press the country to provide more economic support and eliminate the budget deficit.
Among other things, the IMF will urge Ukraine to quickly devalue its currency, cut interest rates and step up efforts to raise taxes, he said. However, it remains unclear how the IMF review will end.
