MOSCOW, December 8. /TASS/. The rise in gas prices for households in Ukraine since 2013 has exceeded inflation more than 4-fold, and other utility services have also seen substantial increases over this period, former Ukrainian Prime Minister (2010-2014) Nikolay Azarov said.

"What has Ukraine’s course toward ‘European integration’ resulted in? In soaring utility costs! <…> In other words, if the national currency has depreciated by roughly a factor of five, then gas prices have risen nearly twenty-two times," he wrote on his Telegram channel.

The former prime minister noted that the gas price increased from 0.48 to 10.5 hryvnias. "Such a rapid escalation in prices cannot be explained by inflation. In 2013, the dollar stood at 8 hryvnias; under [President Pyotr] Poroshenko (who served from 2014 to 2019 — TASS), it climbed to 30 hryvnias. Under Vladimir Zelensky, it has risen to 42," Azarov explained.