SOCHI, Russia, Feb. 10 - Moscow is making the release of the second tranche of a loan for Ukraine that was agreed in December conditional on the country's payment of arrears for Russian natural gas, according to the Russian finance minister.

"We expect the Ukrainian side to fulfill its commitments of payment for the gas. After all, it's a pretty handsome sum of money. Payments were due to start in January, but they haven't been gone ahead yet," Anton Siluanov told reporters.