KIEV, June 9 – Russia will not agree to revise gas contracts of 2009 until 2019, so Ukraine should reduce gas consumption, according to Bohdan Sokolovsky, former Ukrainian presidential envoy for international energy security.

"Ukraine earns [on the transit of Russian gas through its territory to European countries] UAH 1.5 billion! This is not money that could be used to trade Ukraine's independence and the Ukrainian economy for a normally functioning economy," he said at a press conference in Kiev on Wednesday.

Sokolovsky said that Ukraine is doing nothing to cut its energy consumption. He said that in the next eight years until the expiration of the gas contract Ukraine could considerably cut gas consumption thanks to upgrading some industrial sectors in which gas is consumed in unjustifiably large volumes.