Ukraine's two-time former premier and Batkivshchyna Party's leader Yulia Tymoshenko has promised to collect multi-billion dollar debts from Gazprom, saying the Russian natural gas monopoly must pay "up to the last kopeck".

"Nobody will forgive any debts to anyone. Russia and Gazprom will pay everything up to the last kopeck, because their debt is a debt to Ukraine, not to [Ukraine’s gas monopoly] Naftogaz," Tymoshenko wrote on her official Facebook page.

She added that these funds will be used not to pay "millions in bonuses to the Naftogaz management and will not go to the pockets of the corrupt authorities". 

"This money is for the people rather than for bureaucrats," she wrote.

In February, the Stockholm arbitration court ruled that Gazprom must pay Naftogaz a total of $2.6bn, ending a four-year legal battle over gas supply contracts.

On October 1, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that he is confident that all the funds won by Ukraine in courts against Russia will be returned to the Ukrainian state.

"Let them not flatter themselves — this sum will be fully paid to Ukraine. No, sorry, even more will be returned, because every day when Russia does not pay, the amount of payment is growing by half a million dollars," Interfax news agency quoted Poroshenko as saying."And I have no doubt that the amount will be received in the near future."

Naftogaz liquidation

Tymoshenko has also declared her intention to liquidate Naftogaz after the presidential elections should she be victorious. Batkivshchyna Party's leader was the first politician in the war-torn country to officially announce a bid in the 2019 presidential elections.

"These corrupt authorities have six months to rule. The first thing that we will do in half a year is liquidation of Naftogaz as an intermediary, which is not needed," Interfax quoted her as saying on September 28. "What is more, if Naftogaz establishes other intermediary structures, and it now plans to do this for sale of natural gas to Ukrainians [...] All this will be eliminated."

The Batkivschyna leader also criticised Naftogaz's initiative to sell a 49% stake in Ukraine's gas transport system. "To build such a gas transport system, you need to spend $300bn. This amount is in today's prices, taking into account the gas storage facilities. [...] They are going to take virtually half of the property of the gas transport system at one-twentieth of the price. They're valuing it at around $7bn," Tymoshenko said, calling this idea "the scheme of the century."

If the 49% stake in the gas transport system is sold, this decision will be reversed after the presidential election, the politician added.

Meanwhile, Naftogaz's CCO Yuriy Vitrenko believes that the liquidation of the company will impede the recovery of funds from Russia's Gazprom.

"New arbitration against Gazprom with our claims exceeding $12bn, taking into account our experience, will end no earlier than in two or three years," he wrote on his Facebook page on October 2. "We already know that Gazprom avoids implementing the decision of international arbitration and in such conditions forcible recovery will take at least another year. That is, already four years. And to take into account challenging [by Gazprom] in the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Sweden, it's not four years, but six years."