REUTERS
Russia, the United States, and Kazakhstan were major suppliers of coal to Ukraine in the first five months.
Ukraine in January-May 2019 increased foreign currency spending on imports of mineral coal and anthracite by 1.3% year-over-year (y-o-y), to US$1.265 billion.
Read alsoUkraine sees 9.2% reduction in coal production in first four months of 2019
Over the period under review, the country imported 9.1 million tonnes of coal, according to the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine.
Russia, the United States, and Kazakhstan were major suppliers of coal to Ukraine in the first five months, the agency said.
Coal imports from Russia in monetary terms amounted to US$812.3 million (64.2%), those from the U.S. stood at US$379.5 million (30%), while imports from Kazakhstan totaled US$53.6 million (4.24%).
As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukraine started facing an acute shortage of coal since the summer of 2014 as a result of hostilities in the east of the country. It completely lost control over some areas in Donbas where most of coal mines are located. After that, the country started importing coal.
In 2015, the country's imports of coal and anthracite totaled US$1.632 billion. Russia, the United States and Kazakhstan were key suppliers of coal to Ukraine. In 2016, the country reduced spending on coal imports by 10% from 2015, to US$1.467 billion. Ukraine increased foreign exchange costs for imports of mineral coal and anthracite by 1.87 times in 2017, to US$2.744 billion.