On Monday, the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund approved the payment of a long-delayed 700 million U.S. dollars to Ukraine to support the war-torn country because of fears that Russia is plotting a deeper invasion.

The newly arrived fund marks the second batch of $5 billion Standby arrangement It is planned to reach an agreement in the spring of 2020 to help Ukraine respond to the pandemic. Previously, the International Monetary Fund provided Ukraine with a special drawing right (SDR) of US$2.7 billion this summer and provided a financing of €600 million to the European Union last month.

The fund said on Monday evening: “Ukraine’s IMF-supported economic plan aims to help the authorities deal with the impact of the Covid-19 shock, sustain the economic recovery, and advance important structural reforms to reduce key vulnerabilities.”

The availability of these funds and the extension of the IMF program to June 2022 provide a critical and timely financial buffer for Kiev.

U.S. and European officials sounded the alarm this month for the 90,000-114,000 Russian soldiers rapidly assembled near the country’s border. Together with Ukrainian officials, they warned that after Moscow annexed the Crimea peninsula in 2014 and provoked a proxy separatist war in the East Donbass region, it may be planning a deeper invasion that has already claimed approximately 14,000 lives.

Since Russia began to implement radical policies, the multi-billion-dollar financial support provided by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other international financial institutions, as well as the United States and the European Union has been critical to supporting Ukraine.

Payments from the International Monetary Fund were delayed for about a year due to the delay in reforms by President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government and Constitutional Court The verdict last fall Initiated by a pro-Russian party This threatens the newly established anti-corruption agency.

The recent legislation passed by Zelensky’s ruling majority in parliament addressed the IMF’s concerns by increasing the independence of anti-corruption agencies and the central bank.

Ukrainian Minister of National Security Oleksi Danilov, who attended the Halifax International Security Forum this weekend, called on the United States, the European Union and other Western supporters to strengthen military assistance and other forms of support to Kiev, and warned the Russian President Vladimir Putin “can only understand the power of language.”

He added: “By withdrawing its troops to the Ukrainian border, Russia is trying to intensify the security situation in the region as much as possible in order to increase the stakes in future negotiations.”