KIEV - Ukraine on Friday stepped up its economic warfare with Russia by demanding a mult-billion-dollar payment from the Gazprom gas giant for allegedly underpaying Kiev for its fuel transits to European states.
The gesture is largely symbolic because Russia has dismissed similar Ukrainian claims.
But it underscores the severe tensions between the two neighbours and potentially complicates the solution of a litany of existing trade disputes.
The westward-leaning former Soviet country's Anti-Monopoly Committee said Gazprom had two months to pay 86 billion hryvnias ($3.5 billion / 3.2 billion euros) for abusing the "monopoly status" it enjoys on gas transits through Ukraine.
The committee's deputy chief Mariya Nyzhnyk said the sum represented 30 percent of the price for natural gas that passed through the country over the past five years.
The Russian firm expressed "extreme surprise" at the announcement and stressed that it would have no impact on its future operations in Ukraine.
"Gazprom intends to defends its rights and legitimate interests by all legal means at its disposal," it said in a statement.
Ukraine's decades-old pipelines account for about 15 percent of all gas imported by the European Union -- its members rely on Russia for about a third if their outside supplies.
Some of Gazprom's EU clients saw their deliveries limited in 2006 and 2010 when the state-run behemoth — long accused of raising the rates of neighbours who want to ease their dependence on Moscow — halted supplies to Ukraine over price disputes.
Kiev's announcement came just three days after Gazprom itself demanded the payment of a previously-undisclosed $2.55 billion bill for the July to September period of 2015.