their phone calls, the Mighty, the international politics of the Public with parts little. It comes in a different way, is it with calculus. So it was no coincidence that the International monetary Fund (IMF) reported on Wednesday night via a telephone call, the its Executive Director Kristalina Georgieva, previously with the President of the Ukraine had led. “Today I had a Frank conversation with President Volodymyr Selenskyj, over concerns about the pressure being exerted on the national Bank of Ukraine (NBU)”, was Georgieva’s quote. Indirectly, you are threatened with the reduction of the support.

Andreas Mihm

Economics correspondent in Vienna.

F. A. Z. Twitter

the Background of the resignation of the President of the Ukrainian Central Bank, Yakov Smolij beginning of July. He had called his “answer to the systematic pressure that makes it impossible to fulfill my duties as a Central Bank President”. It was a warning to all, the tried, the institutional independence of the Bank to undermine it, wrote the 59-Year-old, the Bank was directed to 2018.

Already, the IMF, which had put the country recently new loans of 5 billion dollars and 2.1 billion dollars already granted had insisted, immediately on the independence of the Central Bank. It was a centerpiece of the IMF-backed programme. It allows for support by the world Bank and the EU in the three-digit million amount.

Hidden threat?

The IMF is held, it is now apparently necessary to load. First of all, Georgieva praised the past year as a “success story”. An independent Central Bank provide macroeconomic stability, support the confidence of investors and protect the financial system. The are “key conditions for investment and growth”. The credible Action by the Central Bank have stabilized the economy; also it had to thank the successful renovation of the “fraud-ridden financial sector” to.

After the IMF Chief has such regard, the representatives of the previous course of monetary policy, applied it directly to Selenskij, had won his great popularity as an actor and TV comedian. It is in the interest of Kiev to maintain the independence of the Central Bank. The next sentence reads like a hidden threat: This is a prerequisite for the current IMF-supported program. “I called on President Selenskyj to keep the price of a sound monetary and financial policies – these are the key to greater investment and inclusive growth.”

The exhorted so, in Kiev announced that he had secures Georgieva to appoint until the weekend, a new Central Bank President, an “independent expert”.