Interest and exchange rates are not crucial for international lenders, Timothy Ash writes from London.

Interest and exchange rates are not crucial for international lenders, Timothy Ash writes from London. “The big red line in all this for the IMF is not FX policy but banking reform,” he writes of the 2014-2015 closings of 100 bankrupt banks. “Opponents of reform in Ukraine are trying to use the exchange rate to cleanse the NBU board of reformers to change the course of banking reform. The exchange rate is just being used as a cover for this agenda…Banking reform remains the key litmus test for the Zelenskiy administration, not really exchange rate policy, as banking reform goes to the heart of key long term issues for Ukraine such fighting corruption.”