The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will send its first mission to Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the IMF's Russian Executive Director Aleksei Mozhin claimed in a comment for Reuters on Sept. 3.
The mission, which will be headed by Argentine economist Jacques Miniane, will allegedly begin in an online format and then include a visit to Moscow from an IMF delegation in October.
No such announcement has been made on the IMF's website or social media.
The last IMF mission to Russia was in 2019, before the Covid-19 pandemic.
"We were excluded from this process under pressure from our Western 'friends,' and there were no further missions in 2022-23," Mozhin told Reuters.
Mozhin will be stepping down from his position in November. He confirmed to AFP on Sept. 3 that he will be replaced by Ksenia Yudaeva, former first deputy governor at Russia's Central Bank and a current adviser to its current governor, Elvira Nabiullina.
Yudaeva was sanctioned by the U.S. in April 2022 for her links to the Central Bank and the Otkritie commercial bank, which was sanctioned by the U.S. on the day the full-scale invasion began.
On paper, sanctioned individuals are banned from entering the U.S., where the IMF's headquarters are located.
"(Yudaeva) will have to run the office from Moscow initially," Mozhin told Reuters. He did not add if she planned to relocate to the Washington, D.C. office later.
Daria Svitlyk
(Updated: )
