Kiev - Ripples from the world financial crisis have shut down most Ukrainian preparation work for the Euro 2012 football championship, government officials said Thursday.

As much as 80 per cent of the infrastructure projects needed in the former Soviet republic to host the premier sports event have come to a complete stop for lack of funding or because of administrative difficulties, said Evhen Vilinsky, a spokesman for Ukraine's Euro 2012 preparation ministry.

Kiev - Ukraine's parliament must approve a 16.5-billion- dollar assistance package from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), or the former Soviet republic will face default, the country's national bank head said Tuesday.

Volodymyr Stelmakh, chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), said Kiev desperately needs the low-cost loan, as without it the NBU "almost certainly" would be unable to honour Ukraine's foreign debts.

Stelmakh's statement, made at a Kiev press conference, was Ukraine's clearest warning yet that the world financial crisis had left the country short of cash and on the edge of default on bonds sold in international markets.

Kiev- Ukraine's government on Friday shut down the country's largest stock market in another attempt to halt share-price freefall.

Managers of Ukraine's largest PFTS stock exchange froze all transactions less than two hours after opening.

Share values had fallen between 10 and 19 per cent over Friday morning in heavy trading.

Since the beginning of October, PFTS officials had repeatedly closed the exchange in the middle of a trading day, three times during last week alone.

Kiev- President Viktor Yushchenko on Wednesday called for a tougher defence of the Ukrainian currency the hryvna, as the national bank conceded it could not prop it up at previous levels in the face of mounting bad economic news.

Kiev  - Relatives of a mostly-Ukrainian crew held hostage aboard a ship off the Somali coast are preparing to pay a ransom demanded by pirates, a crew spokeswoman told the Ukrainian Fakty newspaper

Kiev - Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on Monday called for unprecedented cuts in government spending amidst a desperate quest for more credit as the government battles with a looming national budgetary crisis.

Government staffing cuts of 20 per cent, formation of a national emergency financing fund, and an all-out effort to secure loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) topped a list of proposals offered by Yushchenko and his staff at an emergency meeting of the country's National Security Council.