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Ukraine will demand US$1 trillion from Moscow as compensation for the loss of Crimea and its alleged activities in Donbass region, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk said Thursday.
The prime minister also said that Ukraine threatened Russia with court action if Moscow did not accept by Oct. 29 a debt-restructuring deal over its US$3 billion debt.
"We are ready for judicial proceedings," said Yatsenyuk. He urged Russia to "join normal countries that made the decision to restructure (Kiev's deb).”
"As expected, only one country did not participate in the (restructuring) vote – there is an interesting country called the Russian Federation. And the US$3 billion that Russia should restructure and partially write off, remains unresolved," he said.
Ukraine’s debt to Russia is due in December.
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Responding to the statements by the Ukrainian government, the Kremlin said that it was not clear on how the Ukrainian Kiev calculated the amount.
"Crimea is the territory of the Russian Federation. Donbass is the territory of Ukraine. How did they get that US$1 trillion? It is not clear," Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said. He added that if Ukraine doesn't repay the debt in full, Moscow will declare that it has defaulted.
Crimeans voted overwhelmingly in favor of reunification of their country with Russia.
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Russia has repeatedly made it clear it would not join the debt restructuring plan and intends to invest the money in infrastructure projects in its own territory.
At the end of August, Ukraine signed a restructuring agreement with Western creditors to reduce the national debt burden by about US$3.6 billion. The current IMF policy only allows member states to miss payments to private investors. However, Moscow insists that Kiev’s debt is a state one.
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