Page 7 - UKRRptDec21

proceed to hear Ukraine’s defence,” MinFin stated.
Russia has always claimed that the bonds were issued by a legitimate government and should be honoured. At the time the Yanukovych government was negotiating on an Association Agreement with the EU but Russia was trying to persuade Kyiv to join its Customs Union instead. Money was involved as Yanukovych’s government was short of funds and the bonds, part of a package worth a total of $15bn, were widely seen as a bribe. At the Vilnius summit Yanukovych rejected the EU offer at the last minute and accepted Russia’s offer, thus sparking off the EuroMaidan protests that ended with his ouster.
MinFin provided no timing of a possible ruling of the Supreme Court in the continuation of the case in London.
“Ukraine remains confident of a positive outcome in the proceedings, which are brought as part of a broader strategy of aggression against Ukraine that continues to be waged by Russia to this day,” MinFin wrote.
“Our base-case scenario on this issue is that the Supreme Court will confirm the position of the appellate court, which will make the Russian side try a new lawsuit at a full trial procedure. That said, we see a low likelihood that Ukraine will have to repay the $3bn debt to the Russian side in the foreseeable future,” Alexander Paraschiy of Concorde Capital said in a note.
The two-year $3bn Eurobond was purchased solely by a Russian state fund in December 2013. Russian President Putin promised to lend Ukraine $15bn in tranches of $3bn each quarter, while in fact, only the initial tranche had been provided.
The debt was provided to help the country resolve the deficit of dollar liquidity, as other financing sources became impossible at that time because Ukraine had lost its Western support after then-president Yanukovych had declined to sign an Association Agreement with the EU a month before at the Vilnius summit.
In 2015, the Russian side declined to enter into a restructuring of this debt, while Ukraine managed to restructure all the other Eurobond issues for $15bn.
The Russian side initiated a lawsuit in the UK to force Ukraine into repaying the debt in 2016. In March 2017, the High Court of London rejected all four defence arguments of Ukraine and allowed the Ukrainian side to appeal.
In September 2018, the Court of Appeal in London ruled that one Ukrainian argument (the duress argument) was rejected wrongly by the first-tier court, and the case was later directed to the UK Supreme Court.
2.2 Green bond scandal
Ukraine’s Cabinet convened an extraordinary meeting on Saturday, November 13, to dismiss director of state company Guaranteed Buyer (GarPok) Kostiantyn Petrykovets.
According to Petrykovets, he was fired because he had declined to “implement
7 UKRAINE Country Report December 2021 www.intellinews.com