On Tuesday I wrote a short post detailing my frustrations with the general tone of coverage of Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras and finance minister Yanis Varoufakis. Both of them have been unfairly castigated as radicals or utopians. Worse yet, the journalists and others doing the castigating in many cases freely acknowledge the fundamental reasonableness of Greek policy positions.

Yesterday, a surprising new entrant joined their ranks. The IMF released a report that, alongside the usual accusations of Greek intransigence, included some truly candid admissions as to the infeasibility of European demands:

The International Monetary Fund, a big Greek creditor, conceded a point on Thursday that the Athens government has long been making: Without some reduction in the country’s staggering debt load, Greece has little hope of a sustained economic recovery…

At the very least, the I.M.F. added, Greece will need to delay repayment of much of its debt. More likely, its creditors will need to write off some of the debt and absorb losses, taking a “haircut” on the debt.

A Greek government spokesman, Gavriil Sakellaridis, instead of responding to the I.M.F.’s criticism on Thursday, noted that the report agreed with the government that Greece needed debt relief. The report, Mr. Sakellaridis said, “fully vindicated the Greek government, both as regards its opinion about the unsustainability of the Greek debt and as regards its insistence that any new agreement with creditors must definitely include a debt restructuring or haircut.”

Tsipras was quick to jump on it:

And Varoufakis was similarly triumphant:

Debt relief ought to be at the centre of negotiations over a New Deal for Greece. That has been our government’s mantra from 26th of January, our first day on the job. Exactly five months later, on 26th of June, the IMF has conceded the point (as evidenced earlier today by the NYT) – on the very day Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras called for a referendum so that the Greek people could reject an IMF-led proposal that offered no… debt relief.

My guess is we’ll see the Yes vote eke out a win on Sunday, but for everyone’s sakes I’m rooting for No.