The Ukraine crisis has triggered the most serious East-West confrontation since the end of the Cold War a quarter century ago, but it has also deepened the slump in Ukraine's battered economy, centered on coal and steel production, gas transit and grain exports. Russia is Ukraine's single most important trading partner, and a major supplier of natural gas at a discounted rate.

Without IMF-mandated austerity measures, the economy could contract by up to 10 percent this year, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk told parliament, explaining why his government had bowed to the fund's conditions. "Ukraine is on the edge of economic and financial bankruptcy," he said.

Heeding that warning on Thursday, Ukraine's parliament voted in favor of an anti-crisis bill that was required for the IMF bailout to be implemented.

Kiev had previously opened the way for the IMF deal by announcing on Wednesday a radical 50 percent hike in the price of domestic gas starting May 1 and promising to phase out remaining energy subsidies by 2016, an unpopular step Yanukovich had refused to take. It also accepted a flexible exchange rate that is fueling inflation, set to hit 12 to 14 percent this year, according to Yatsenyuk.

The prime minister, who took on the job a month ago saying his government was on a "kamikaze" mission to make painful decisions, said the price of Russian gas on which the nation depends may rise 79 percent — a recipe for popular discontent.

In a statement after Ukraine's IMF deal, the White House said: "This represents a powerful sign of support from the international community for the Ukrainian government.

"The IMF program will be a central component of a package of assistance to support Ukraine as it implements reforms and conducts free and fair elections that will allow all the Ukrainian people to determine the future of their country."

The IMF statement said a key element of the program would focus on cleaning up Ukraine's opaque energy giant Naftogaz, which imports gas from Russia's Gazprom. Naftogaz's chief executive was arrested last week in a corruption probe.

"The program will focus on improving the transparency of Naftogaz's accounts and restructuring of the company to reduce its costs and raise efficiency," it said.