Ukraine's largest steelmaker, Metinvest said on Wednesday steel and coke assets in territory controlled by pro-Russian separatists had been seized by rebels, the International New York Times reported on a Reuters story. "Metinvest does not expect any such seizure to have a negative effect on the implementation of its debt restructuring," the company said in a statement. Metinvest's bond holders and banks agreed a restructuring last month. Metinvest is part of the business empire of Ukraine's richest man, Rinat Akhmetov.

Embarrassed members of Ukraine’s parliament have given up a pay rise to try to defuse public anger after an exercise in transparency revealed they held hundreds of millions of dollars of assets from expensive cars to prized works of art. Tens of thousands of civil servants were required to file public “e-declarations” of their wealth as part of a far-reaching anti-corruption initiative backed by western donors to the war-scarred country.

The Ukrainian government Thursday welcomed a long-delayed emergency payment of $1 billion from the International Monetary Fund, a move that paved the way for further international aid to help bolster the country’s fragile finances, The Wall Street Journal reported. “The positive decision of the IMF suggests that the world recognizes that there are reforms in Ukraine, there is qualitative and positive change in Ukraine, and the country is moving in the right direction,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a statement.

Ukraine has agreed a restructuring deal with Russia's Sberbank on $367.4 million of state-guaranteed debt, the government said in an online statement on Thursday, the Daily Mail reported on a Reuters story. The deal included a 25 percent writedown and maturity extensions to Sept. 1, 2019, it said. The debt of state-owned firms, Ukravtodor and Yuzhnoye State Design Office, was included in the external loans that Ukraine has sought to restructure under a $40 billion bailout programme coordinated by the International Monetary Fund.

The head of the International Monetary Fund warned that the lender’s bailout of Ukraine could be in jeopardy without “a substantial new effort” by the country to accelerate overhauls to improve governance and fight corruption, The Wall Street Journal reported. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde’s remarks on Wednesday underscore growing concerns in the West that Ukraine isn’t moving fast enough to make its recession-hit economy more competitive and root out graft.

Lenders of last resort are becoming agents of change for economies across the former Soviet Union, Bloomberg News reported today. Their governments paralyzed by collapsing revenue, central banks sprang into action when the crisis hit last year, allowing more flexible currencies to take root from Belarus to Azerbaijan.

Ukraine’s leaders pledged to put aside their differences and take measures to unlock loans from the International Monetary Fund, after weeks of squabbling strained the pro-Western coalition and delayed the latest bailout tranche, The Wall Street Journal reported. The statement, signed by the president, prime minister and chairman of parliament and released late Tuesday, tried to draw a line under infighting in the coalition.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will not get involved in the negotiations between Moscow and Kiev to restructure Ukraine’s debt to Russia, IMF Communications Department Director Gerry Rice said in a briefing on Thursday, Sputnik News reported. “We expect Russian and Ukrainian authorities to conduct direct discussions on this matter,” Rice stated.

In a related story, the Irish Times reported that Ukraine’s economy exited 1 1/2 years of recession last quarter, reaching a milestone toward what officials predict will be a drawn-out recovery. Gross domestic product rose a preliminary 0.7 per cent in July-September from the previous quarter, the State Statistics Office said Monday, buoyed by a modest industrial revival and relative peace in the nation’s east. The annual decline eased to 7 per cent from 14.6 per cent in the second quarter and as high as 17.2 per cent in the first.

Ukraine’s Western allies are preparing to accelerate planned changes to the International Monetary Fund’s lending policies to prevent Russia from stymieing the country’s $25 billion financial rescue package, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ukraine’s economy has suffered drastically over the past year or so, in large part due to a still-simmering conflict with Russia-backed separatists in the east. The Kremlin has rejected Ukraine’s invitation to participate in a debt restructuring, and Kiev has said it won’t be able to pay all of the $3 billion due to Moscow by the end of the year.