Lavrov explains why Russia forgave other countries' debts
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stated that Russia wrote off the loans provided by the Soviet Union to other countries because they were 90% unrecoverable, TASS reports.
According to Lavrov, several factors impeded the recovery of these funds. The Minister recalled that the USSR was not an integral part of the international monetary and financial system and the exchange rate of the ruble was set by the Russian State Bank.
“A few years ago, we wrote off several billion dollars in loans to African countries that were granted during the Soviet era, which we would never receive because in legal terms, it is very hard to prove the currency rate at which these funds were borrowed,” Lavrov explained.
Some loans were granted to organizations that fought for independence and were not state actors. In this case, it is impossible to demand payment of the debts, as they were not initially based on any international legal agreements.
According to estimates of independent experts, Russia has lost $140 billion dollars as a result of this unrecoverable debt.