The Verkhovna Rada allowed the government of Ukraine to introduce a moratorium on the payment of external debt

The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine supported two government bills on granting him the right, if necessary, to terminate the payment of international debt obligations to holders in connection with a difficult economic situation and in order to protect against a possible attack by unscrupulous creditors, UNIAN reports.

As the agency correspondent reports, 256 people's deputies voted for the first bill, 246 for the second.

"In the case of an attack by unscrupulous creditors to Ukraine, this moratorium protects the assets of the state and the public sector," the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, widespread on Tuesday, said shortly before the vote.

The document emphasizes that "the provision of such a right to the Government of Ukraine does not affect either the stability of the country's banking system, or the course of the Ukrainian hryvnia."

"But by the adoption of this law, we ask our foreign private creditors to join the support of Ukraine and share a heavy burden with us," the document emphasizes.

According to Interfax , we are talking about external commercial duty, which the government previously determined for negotiations on restructuring with creditors, but it does not include obligations of Oschadbank, Ukreximbank and Ukrzaliznytsia. In addition, the list of debts, the payment of which the moratorium may be imposed, does not include debts to the IMF, the EBRD and other institutional creditors.

The total external public debt of Ukraine is $ 70 billion. Debt restructuring is one of the requirements of the country's main creditor - IMF.

The country counts on restructuring $ 23 billion of external debt. The government seeks to do this until June, when the International Monetary Fund plans to discuss the provision of Ukraine to the second tranche of the credit program.

Earlier, Kyiv several times reproached the largest creditors in tightening negotiations, the same, in turn, said that Ukraine did not want to accept their conditions. In April, in particular, Natalya Yaresko called on the creditors to “write off” Ukraine more than $ 15 billion, but the Committee of private creditors of Ukraine, which unites five largest papers for about $ 10 billion, opposed the write -out of the main amount of the debt.

The largest holder of the Ukrainian public debt is the group of Franklin Templeton, whose funds own the papers with a market value of about $ 4 billion, RBC recalls. The second largest holder is Russia, who bought bonds with a nominal value of $ 3 billion at the sunset of the reign of Viktor Yanukovych. Russia refused to participate in the restructuring of Ukrainian debt and wants to get its money back on time, expired in December 2015.