With the summer slipping away, the realistic scenario for Ukraine’s relationship with the IMF might be to convert Ukraine’s frozen Stand-By Arrangement into an Extended Fund Facility

, wrote Timothy Ash, a veteran observer of Ukraine’s IMF deals. The IMF may “look to roll the monies into a new EFF to be negotiated towards year end – maybe that should now be the focus,” Ash writes from London. “Any such EFF would then roll in much needed structural reform conditionality. Arguably the problem with the current SBA was that it lacked any real structural benchmarks.”