KYIV, Dec 24 – Ukraine would receive income of $15 billion in five years of transit of Russian natural gas, according to Minister of Energy and Environment Protection of Ukraine Oleksiy Orzhel.

"The approximate income with which Ukraine left this meeting [the meeting in Minsk on December 20, following which Ukraine-Russia-EC signed an intergovernmental protocol], is more than $3 billion for arbitration and approximately $3 billion for transit each year during five years," the minister wrote in his column for the Ekonomichna Pravda (Economic Truth) publication on Tuesday.