Riga - The European Union proposed on Thursday offering an additional €1.8bn to help save Ukraine from bankruptcy as Kiev assured Germany it had credible plans to modernise.
With an International Monetary Fund team resuming talks in Kiev, the EU offered the medium-term loans to add to the €1.4bn it handed over last year, subject to approval by EU governments and EU lawmakers.
"Europe stands united behind Ukraine," Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker told a news conference in the Latvian capital Riga, where he announced the aid.
The EU's offer came on the day German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Ukraine Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk in Berlin. The German leader said later she had heard a convincing case for reform.
But beyond the show of Europe's political support for Ukraine, investors see a growing risk of default with the country's economy pushed close to collapse by a pro-Russian separatist war in the east,
Ukraine's 2017 dollar bond trades around 60 cents in the dollar, down some 40c over the past year while the 2023 and 2022 issues are even lower around 55c - an indication of how much investors believe they will recover on every dollar invested.