IMF to send first mission to Russia since Ukraine invasion

By Gleb Bryanski

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The IMF will become the first major international financial body to send its official mission to Russia since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Aleksei Mozhin, the IMF's Russian executive director, told Reuters on Tuesday.

Mozhin said the International Monetary Fund mission would start via an online format on Sept. 16, and will continue with an IMF delegation visit to Moscow for meetings with Russian officials until Oct. 1.

The IMF’s last annual mission visited Russia in November 2019, before the start of the COVID pandemic. There have been no IMF missions to Russia since the start of Russia's war in Ukraine.

"We were excluded from this process under pressure from our Western 'friends' and there were no further missions in 2022-23," Mozhin said from his IMF office in Washington.

The mission will be led by Argentinian Jacques Miniane.

Many Western nations raised the possibility of Russia’s expulsion from the IMF in the aftermath of the Ukraine invasion, but that proved difficult because of reluctance from other members with large voting quotas such as China and India.

The IMF has been criticised by Western member states since the start of the war for providing what they say are overly optimistic outlooks for the sanctions-hit Russian economy, and warnings that any decisions about seizing frozen Russian assets should be backed with "sufficient legal support".

Mozhin, an IMF veteran who oversaw Russia's joining the organization in 1992 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is stepping down from his post from Nov. 1. He said he will assist the IMF mission.

Mozhin said he will be replaced by central banker Ksenia Yudaeva, a close associate of central bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina. Yudaeva has been under U.S. sanctions since April 2022.

"She will have to run the office from Moscow initially," Mozhin said. Yudaeva was sanctioned as board chairman of Otkritie bank, which the central bank used to own. The bank was sold to state lender VTB in 2022. Yudaeva has since left Otkritie. The IMF said it is checking the information about Yudaeva's nomination.

Russia's finance ministry officially confirmed Yudaeva’s nomination.

Yudaeva received a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and did an internship at the Stockholm School of Economics. She joined the central bank together with Nabiullina in 2013 and was one of the architects of Russia’s transition to a floating exchange rate.

Yudaeva stepped down as the first deputy governor of the central bank in August 2023 but stayed as an adviser to Nabiullina.

(Writing by Gleb Bryanski and Maxim Rodionov; Editing by Leslie Adler)