Arseniy Yatsenyuk: "The time must come when we will have to examine whether there were "kickbacks" in paying for Russian gas under the gas contract and who received them"

"The time must come when we will have to examine whether there were "kickbacks" in paying for Russian natural gas under the gas contract and who received them. There are no "kickbacks" now due to lack of an intermediary. We have the direct contract both with Gazprom and our European partners," Prime Minister of Ukraine Arseniy Yatsenyuk, speaking in Parliament on Friday, 18 September.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk stressed that in the past two years Ukraine managed to "finally got off the gas needle of the Russian Federation", "About 70% of the gas supplied from the countries of the European Union we buy at the market price, but not at the price that was signed and agreed upon in 2009."

"We have ensured the filling of lawsuits against the Russian Federation to the Stockholm Arbitration Court. Ukraine demands from Russian Gazprom to return $16 billion of damages that Ukraine overpaid as the gas price and sustained a loss from gas transit," he stressed.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that the Russian Federation filed a $27-billion lawsuit against Ukraine on the basis of the same gas contracts - concerning paragraph in the contract on the principle of "take or pay": "We believe the requirements of the Russian Federation to be groundless, and we will fight in order to defend the Ukrainian national interests."