Putin said Ukraine still had work to do to align its gas regulatory landscape with that of Europe, questioning whether Kiev would be able to achieve this in time. "That is not up to us," he said. "Therefore, the risk of termination of transit exists."

Alexey Miller pointed out that a number of strategic issues need to be resolved prior to the signing of a new transit contract.

Ukraine's GDP growth is set to stay at 3.3 per cent in 2019 (a repeat of the 2018 result) and will accelerate slightly to 3.5 per cent in 2020.

Gazprom has offered to Naftogaz the chance to start over with a clean slate provided all legal disputes were dropped. "There are known cases in international practice when disputes between companies were settled out of court, and we are offering a zero option whereby all court proceedings would cease, all lawsuits would be withdrawn, and we would draw a line under this whole affair," Miller said last month.

The current 10-year agreement between Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukrayiny expires at the end of 2019, and the EC is brokering talks aimed at putting a new contract in place to take effect from the start of 2020.

The current 10-year agreement between Gazprom and Naftogaz expires at the end of 2019, and the European Commission is brokering talks aimed at putting in place a new contract to take effect from the start of 2020.

China’s Yantai LNG Group is aiming to start up a liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal by 2022 and expects government approval for it over the next few weeks

Ukraine moves Russian oil to Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The oil transit capacity of Ukraine's section of the Druzhba pipeline is about 25 million mt/year (500,000 b/d).

A UK Atomic Energy Authority spokesman told S&P Global Platts the funds were separate to the UK's participation via the EU in the global ITER fusion research project in France.

Mr Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma, Ukraine’s largest private gas company which acquired several of its extraction licences while he was in government, had lost a political patron when Mr Yanukovich was evicted from office. Weeks later the energy tycoon sought help elsewhere. Burisma made a surprise appointment to its board: Hunter Biden, younger son of then-US vice-president Joe Biden.