KIEV, Oct. 1 - Fitch Ratings has downgraded Naftogaz Ukrayiny's long-term foreign and local currency issuer default ratings (IDRs) to 'RD' (Restricted Default) from 'C.’

Both ratings have been placed on rating watch evolving (RWE). Fitch has affirmed the senior unsecured rating on Naftogaz's $500 million eurobond at 'C'. The recovery rating on the eurobond is 'RR4'.

KIEV, Oct. 1 – Russia's OAO Tatneft has increased the amount of its claim against Ukraine in the conflict over Ukrtatnafta, where the company is a shareholder, to $2.4 billion, according to materials from Naftogaz Ukrayiny and the cabinet, which were published with a proposal on the restructuring of Naftogaz's eurobonds worth $500 million.

KIEV, Oct. 1 - Ukraine’s Yenakievo Iron and Steel Works (YeMZ), one of the world’s largest producers of steel billets, signed a Joint Implementation Project (JIP) deal under the Kyoto Protocol with ING Bank seeking to reduce emissions of greenhouse gas (GHG).

KIEV, Oct. 1 – Russian oil major Lukoil on Thursday threatened to shut down its Ukrainian oil refinery after the country’s oil shipper suggested switching pipeline routes to enable massive imports of Caspian Sea crude.

KIEV, Oct. 1 – The Coal Industry Ministry has started talks with leading banks and investment companies on the attraction of UAH3.1 billion for technical re-equipment of state coal companies under state guarantees, according to First Deputy Coal Minister, Oleksandr Frantsishko.

KIEV, Oct. 1 - Euro-Finance Ltd., which controls nine companies dealing in iron and steel scrap in Ukraine, has signed an agreement with Rivne regional state administration on the construction of a steel mill in Radyvyliv District with an annual production capacity of 800,000 tons of hot rolled steel.

KIEV, Oct. 1 - A local Ukrainian court ruled to liquidate UkrGaz-Energo, once the most powerful supplier of natural gas in Ukraine, a spokesman for the Justice Ministry said Wednesday.

VILNIUS, Sept. 28 - Representatives of Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Georgia are planning to meet in Vilnius in October to sign an agreement on cooperation in a project to extend the Odessa-Brody oil pipeline to Plock and on to Gdansk, Neringa Pazusiene, director of the Economics Ministry's law and personnel department, told BNS.

KIEV, Sept. 28 – The Antimonopoly Committee has permitted Kazakhstan's TuranAlem Bank and Russia's Alfa Bank to buy a 25%+1 share stake in Kiev's Oranta National Insurance Company, the committee told Interfax-Ukraine.

KIEV, Sept. 28 - Ukraine plans to re-equip all gas compressor plants to allow them to use cheap electric power, not natural gas, for moving Russian gas to markets in the European Union, the energy and fuel ministry reported Friday.