Exact dates for the start of hearing a lawsuit of minority shareholders in public joint-stock company Ukrnafta against Ukraine in the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce would be known by March 2018, Justice Minister of Ukraine Pavlo Petrenko has said.

"I think that by March 2018 the concrete dates for hearings will be selected: autumn or the end of this year," he told Interfax-Ukraine.

"We cannot disclose the state of affairs at this stage. We are actively preparing for the court hearing," the minister said.

Earlier a source in the government told Interfax-Ukraine that the Justice Ministry has already managed to achieve significant procedural victories, including a schedule for hearing the lawsuit and postponing the date of hearings tentatively to October of this year, which gives additional time for preparing the necessary arguments in the defense strategy.

At the same time, the source said that the subject to be heard in this lawsuit covers a significant amount of material and legal circumstances that served as the basis for the lawsuit, peculiarities of the legal regulation of the energy sector in Ukraine and the provisions of international law, which makes it one of the most difficult and important lawsuits in the work of the Justice Ministry defending the interests of the state in international courts.