With Venezuela on the edge of default, Russia has thrown it a life preserver.

The Russian finance minister, Anton Siluanov, announced on Wednesday that the two countries had agreed to the restructuring of roughly $3 billion in Kremlin loans.

The amount is tiny compared with Venezuela’s crushing $120 billion debt, but it may help President Nicolás Maduro’s government make hundreds of millions of dollars in payments over the next few weeks to other creditors and help reassure bondholders that a default is not imminent.

It has been a scramble for Venezuela to make a $1.2 billion payment on a national oil company bond due last Friday, mostly principal, which had no grace period. Early Wednesday, investors and financial analysts were beginning to fear that Venezuela would not come up with the money it had promised to pay.

By midday, overdue transfers to bondholders began. Still, over the last month Venezuela has delayed payment of more than $350 million in interest on various bonds, with grace periods ending over the next few weeks.