NJSC Naftogaz Ukrainy with lawyers next week will begin the final stage of preparing an appeal to international arbitration against Gazprom for reducing transit of natural gas through Ukraine below the contracted volumes, CEO of the company Yuriy Vitrenko said.

"Gazprom refused to conduct any negotiations in a bilateral format. Therefore, next week we are meeting with our lawyers and finalizing the relevant submission of a new arbitration. If a miracle does not happen before July 21, it will take us some time to prepare the appeal - this is a complicated system of documentation with the participation of a large number of lawyers and experts, and we will file a lawsuit in the near future," he said on the air of the national telethon on Tuesday.

According to Vitrenko, the current contract provides that the place of arbitration will be Zurich, which will consider the claim under Swedish law.

In an interview with the Interfax-Ukraine agency at the end of May, the head of Naftogaz announced a pre-arbitration procedure had begun due to Gazprom's failure to comply with the "pump or pay" condition under the contract for organizing natural gas transit. The terms of the contract with Gazprom provide that the parties have 45 days to settle disputes before going to arbitration.

Vitrenko recalled that the failure of Gazprom to fulfill its contractual obligations under the contract also entails a violation of the settlement agreement, according to which Naftogaz abandoned claims in the $12.2 billion arbitration initiated in 2018.

"If they do not fulfill the obligation ‘pump or pay,’ this means that they are violating not only the contract for organizing transit, but also the settlement agreement. That is, this is arbitration not only for the amount of underpayment, but also for $12.2 billion, which we withdrew from the arbitration," Vitrenko stressed.