The Gazprom headquarters hosted today a working meeting between Alexey Miller, Chairman of the Gazprom Management Committee and Evgeny Bakulin, Head of NAK Naftogaz Ukrainy.

The decision was made that Gazprom would grant a USD 1 billion advanced payment to Naftogaz Ukrainy for gas transit. With these funds, the Ukrainian company will purchase natural gas from Gazprom and inject it into Ukraine's underground gas storage (UGS) facilities. Naftogaz Ukrainy needs to fill the UGS facilities with gas in a timely manner in order to be able to fulfill its commitments on uninterrupted transit of Russian gas to Europe during the winter period.

The total amount of advanced payments for gas transit since early 2012 equals USD 5.15 billion. According to provisional estimates, the rest of this amount is enough to pay for the Russian gas transit via Ukraine till early 2015.