A four-year programme, in the middle of a war

The International Monetary Fund does not lend into a war. Its rules require a credible path to debt sustainability, and a country under invasion cannot demonstrate one on any normal assumption.

So the framework itself was adapted, allowing programmes for countries facing exceptionally high uncertainty, with financing assurances from partners and a plan built around scenarios rather than a single forecast. In March 2023 an Extended Fund Facility arrangement for Ukraine was approved on that basis.

What a programme provides that emergency lending does not

A multi-year path, quarterly reviews, and a published set of commitments. For everyone else lending to Ukraine, the programme became the anchor: bilateral donors and the European Union could size their own support against it, and its reviews became the common report card.

The reform conditions were substantial — tax administration, governance of state companies, the anti-corruption institutions, banking. That an institution as procedural as the Fund reshaped its own rulebook to make this possible is itself part of the record.