The former republics of the Soviet Union breached their agreements to give Russia their assets abroad, said Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday while meeting with the work group for drafting amendments to the constitution.
According to Putin, when the Soviet Union collapsed, Moscow undertook to repay the debts of all the former Soviet republics, in exchange for which they agreed to give Moscow their foreign property.
“The whole world was very happy” when Russia undertook to pay these debts, the president emphasized, adding that “everyone agreed that we are the legal successors when loans had to be repaid for the republics of the former Soviet Union”.
However, the republics failed to keep their commitments, he remarked. “We repaid the loans for everyone, but several newly formed states in Soviet Union space did not give us their assets abroad,” TASS cites Putin as saying.
He added that for Ukraine alone, Russia repaid $16 billion.
The Soviet Union’s debt problem arose in the last six years of its existence, when in 1985 Saudi Arabia dramatically increased its oil production, and the price per barrel dropped by two thirds – from $32 to $9.5 – in the space of a few months.
The sale of hydrocarbons abroad was essentially the Soviet Union’s sole source of hard foreign currency, which it used to pay for imported grain, equipment, consumer goods and technologies. When faced with a shortage of oil revenue, the Soviet leadership approached the West for loans. As a result, the USSR’s total foreign debt doubled between 1985 and 1989, and the net amount (not covered by reserves) tripled, from $11.2 to $31.3 billion.
According to the State Bank of the USSR’s final assessment in 1989, the Soviet Union’s foreign debt amounted to $45.8 billion. According data from the Central Bank of Russia, available from 1994 onward, this amount was already $104.5 billion, of which roughly half ($47.6 billion) was owed to the London club of creditors, and the rest to the Parisian club ($27.3 billion) and to former socialist countries ($27.5 billion).
By 2001, Russia had repaid around $10 billion of these loans and restructured its debt to the London club, issuing $20.5 billion in eurobonds, which had been completely repaid by 2017.
Russia’s primary debt was almost fully repaid in two major tranches in 2005 and 2006-7. In October last year, according to the Bank of Russia, the Russian Federation owed only $475 million of the debt inherited from the USSR. Of this amount, $20 million was owed to socialist countries, and the majority – $454 million – to “other official creditors” not specified by the statistics.
(c) UAWire
Interesting facts about the debts owed to Muscovy. Seems some debts are more important than others. Spot the connection between Muscovy and the countries that had it’s debts to Russia written off.
“Russia has written off a large part of the debt developing countries owed it. In 2014, Russia forgave more than $30 billion in debt owed by Cuba, which accounted for 90 percent of the total liabilities. The remaining debt, amounting to $3.5 billion, will be paid off within ten years in 20 equal installments.
Russia also wrote off Iraq’s debt of $21.5 billion, Mongolia ($11.1 billion), Afghanistan ($11 billion) and North Korea ($10 billion), as well as $20 billion in debts owed by several African countries.
In total, Russia has forgiven more than $100 billion in debt owed by developing countries over the past decade.”
So here’s how it works.
We were in charge and we ran shit so badly that we lost a ton of money.
In order to stop haemorrhaging money we let the Union dissolve.
Now our former assets, because they are being run, mostly honestly and efficiently, are making money, we want them back.
That way we can waste even more money on invading other Countries, inventing expensive weapons that will never work and spending money on weapons we will never get to use.
Putin seems to have forgotten who run the Soviet Union. There where no independent states, Russia controlled everything. If the short bastard wants to play that game, Ukraine should slap in a claim against Russia for the scorched earth policy in 1941, when they destroyed or stolen everything in Ukraine.
Ukraine should demand that Moskovia return Kazan and Rostov, well either to Ukraine or Georgia, lol
“The former republics of the Soviet Union breached their agreements…”
The moron should get used to the fact that other countries can do what mafia land does regularly … breach contracts and break agreements. Now what, little shitt nugget?
a very big target will be the hydrocarbon deposits on the Black Sea continental shelf Which are Ukraine’s energy future.
So the Ukraine government needs to get its act together and start building a navy before Russia decides to get another case of the grabby hands.
Another soap bubble. Ukraine owes Russia a warm Corona fart. I hope the Donbas Blitz (Operation Toilet Bowl) is already being prepared…
Putin was a mistake his mother should have swallowed…..&*#^%@*%……
He was created in a lab by Dr Mengele, who successfully blended the dna’s of hitler, stalin, a weasel, a rat, a cockroach and a venomous snake.
bhaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!