KIEV, Sept. 22 - Ukraine will not resume direct natural gas imports from Turkmenistan until 2015 when the Central Asian country plans to double gas output, Bohdan Sokolovskiy, President Viktor Yushchenko’s top energy aide, said Tuesday.

This is a setback for Ukraine, which has been seeking to resume direct imports of gas from Turkmenistan much earlier, in order to reduce dependence on Russian gas.

“We must consider the year of 2015 as the target year,” Sokolovskiy said in a statement.