IMF to visit Kyiv next week to review reform program:
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says it will send a mission to Kyiv from May 10 to May 18 to review whether the new Ukrainian government's reform program is sufficient to restore disbursements from a $17.5 billion bailout loan.
Before Prime Minister Volodymyr Hrosyman took office on April 14, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde had warned that the bailout program could be halted unless Kyiv launched "a substantial new effort" to improve governance and fight corruption.
Lagarde said that unless Kyiv acted to put the country on a "promising path of reform," Ukraine would risk "a return to the pattern of failed economic policies that has plagued its recent history."
IMF bailout programs involve the disbursement of loans in stages and have always been contingent upon economic and political reforms.
A third tranche of assistance to Ukraine has been held up since October due to concerns that funds might be squandered or stolen by corrupt officials. (Reuters, Bloomberg, Kyiv Post)
Here's an item just in from RFE/RL's news desk:
Mine Blast In Eastern Ukraine Kills One, Traps Nine
A blast at a mine in a separatist-controlled part of eastern Ukraine's Luhansk region has killed at least one miner.
Larisa Airapetian, the top health official of the Russia-backed separatist's self-declared government in the Luhansk region, said on May 4 that the gas explosion at the Maloivanivska mine also had trapped nine miners underground.
Airapetian said four other miners were hospitalized with burn injuries from the May 3 gas explosion.
Airapetian said efforts to rescue the nine trapped miners were underway on May 4.
Three districts of Ukraine's Luhansk region have been under separatists' control since April 2014.