The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will revise downward in April its growth forecast for the international economy due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva announced.

According to Lusa news agency, the IMF chief admitted that a default by the Russian Federation is no longer "an unlikely event.

The IMF and the World Bank will hold their spring meetings, virtually, the week of April 18.

"Briefly, we have a tragic impact of the war in Ukraine. We have a major contraction in the Russian Federation and a likely impact on the prospects of the international economy," he said during a briefing with journalists.

"Next month, we will revise downward our projections for global (economic) growth," he added.

Although the world economy has not yet recovered from the new coronavirus pandemic, "a crisis unlike any other," it is going through "even more shocking terrain," Georgieva stressed.

"The unthinkable has occurred. We have a war in Europe," he said.

On the impact on the Russian Federation, the IMF leader stressed that the "unprecedented" sanctions by allied countries led to "a brutal contraction of the Russian economy and a deep recession."

Among the expected effects, he detailed, are the massive devaluation of the currency, which causes inflation to soar, and the subsequent lowering of purchasing power and living standards for a large majority of the Russian population.

Georgieva also said that a default by Russian Federation "is not an unlikely event," pointing out that the problem was not the availability of money, but the inability to use it since Moscow was cut off from the international financial system.

Source: Lusa