Hungary ready to ship gas to Ukraine: foreign minister

BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary is ready to ship natural gas to neighboring Ukraine and the technical conditions for starting the necessary reverse pipeline flows are in place, Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi said on Thursday after meeting Ukraine's deputy foreign minister. Hungary receives most of its gas supplies from Russia via a pipeline from Ukraine. National news agency MTI also quoted Martonyi, who met Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Danilo Lubkivsky in Budapest, as saying that Hungary firmly backed Ukraine's territorial unity and believed the annexation of Crimea by Russia was illegitimate. The gas pipeline network operator FGSZ Zrt said earlier on Thursday in a reply to emailed Reuters questions that Hungary could ship 16.8 million cubic meters of gas per day to Ukraine. (Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by Anthony Barker)