MOSCOW, Russia - Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his government to study restructuring a €2.5 billion loan that Moscow extended to Cyprus in 2011 and must be paid back by 2016, the Kremlin said on Monday.

Putin instructed "the government and the Russian ministry of finance to work with their partners on the issue of restructuring the loan previously issued to Cyprus," news agencies quoted Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.

The Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has also said that Moscow intended to study the consequences of the Cyprus bailout deal agreed in Brussels amid analyst warnings of Russian deposits suffering the biggest hit.

"We have to figure out what this story turns into in the long run, what the consequences for the international financial and monetary system will be -- and thus, for our own interests as well," news agencies quoted Medvedev as saying in Russia's first official response to the rescue.

'Burden on bigger, mostly Russian, deposits'

The €10 billion package will see Russians who have some US$31 billion parked in Cypriot corporate and private accounts lose cash from a so-called "haircut" placed on deposits of more than €100,000 in Cyprus's biggest bank.

Moscow's Alfa Bank investment house noted that "a bigger burden is to be placed on bigger, mostly Russian deposits under the deal."

Russia reacted angrily to an original plan that was to have seen a 10% levy placed on deposits in Cyprus of more than €100,000. That deal was dropped after being rejected by the Cypriot parliament.

European negotiators and Cypriot officials have still not worked out the final details that stipulate how painful the cut to the larger holdings in Cyprus's biggest bank will be.