"The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development will continue to lend to Ukraine as long as the country's newly reshuffled government sticks to its reform agenda" - said Suma Chakrabarti, the head of the EBRD.
The EBRD has spent two billion euros in Ukraine over the last two years, but this week's change of prime minister and the departure of its finance minister Natalia Yaresko, one of the key faces in Kiev's reform efforts, have underscored the challenges there.
"As long as they can continue to do that (reform), whoever is prime minister, whoever is in the cabinet, then we will continue to support them," Suma Chakrabarti told Reuters during an interview to mark the bank's 25th anniversary.
"Our linkage must be to reform, not a particular personality."
Volodymyr Groysman, a political ally of Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko, was approved as the country's prime minister on Thursday in the biggest political shakeup since a 2014 uprising brought in a pro-Western leadership.
But the departure from the cabinet of experienced technocrats, including U.S.-born Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko, who led strategic talks with Western lenders and was the country's representative at the EBRD, has rattled pro-European reformists.
Some deputies said the new government would struggle to get laws approved. If proved right, this could cause problems. Kiev badly needs further tranches of loans from the International Monetary Fund even more than the support of the EBRD.
"The hard stuff really now starts in terms of tackling some of the vested interests in the country, some of the bigger oligarchs and tackling their interests," Chakrabarti said.
