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Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is preparing not to repay the loans to the International Monetary Fund amounting to nearly 1.6 billion euro at the end of June, reports the Greek online edition iefimerida.gr, citing its "highly reliable" sources.

A little over a week ago, Athens submitted a request to the International Monetary Fund to repay all loans due in June at the end of the month. The Fund approved the request, sparking off dozens of publications that compared Greece with Zambia - so far the only country that made a similar request 30 years ago. Therefore, the payment was set for 30 June.

However, the sources of iefimerida.gr, which the newspaper describes as "senior political interlocutors of the Prime Minister", indicate that the plans of Alexis Tsipras have changed. The government has decided not to pay the grand total on the specific date and to play the last card of Greece in negotiations with creditors in this way.

It is expected that such a move will provoke turmoil globally and unforeseen consequences in the financial markets. Simultaneously, the Greek Prime Minister assured his interlocutors that he aimed not to direct the talks towards rupture but he rather expected that creditors would give way to the government request to restructure the debt.

The Greek edition notes that during yesterday's briefing, government spokesman Gabriel Sakellaridis answered the question as to whether Athens would pay the loans to the International Monetary Fund on 30 June in the following way: "We hope to reach an agreement by that time, so that the discussion on this question will make no sense."

At the same time, the expectations for reaching an agreement at the Eurogroup meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday are now minimal, following the statements by Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis that he will not submit new proposals for budgetary measures to his colleagues.

While creditors are adamant that "the ball is now in the field of Greece," the cabinet in Athens insists that its proposals are comprehensive and are on the negotiating table. For his part, Alexis Tsipras believes that his office has given way on many issues and, for this reason, nobody can accuse Greece of not working towards reaching an agreement. According to commentators, Athens is seeking to transfer the responsibility for a possible rupture of negotiations to the creditors, accusing them of intransigence.

The parliamentary group of SYRIZA will hold a meeting today, headed by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Both Greece, and Brussels and Washington are anticipating with great interest his speech before lawmakers, which will have messages to the creditors.