U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has told Ukraine's president that reforms to the country's energy sector are imperative and need to be accelerated.
The White House said in a statement on September 21 that Biden also told visiting President Petro Poroshenko that he needed to do more to clean up Ukraine's judiciary and prosecutor's office, which have been tainted by corruption for years.
The two officials met in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
There was no immediate comment from the Ukrainian president's office to the meeting.
Biden also told Poroshenko that the U.S. administration is prepared to go ahead with another $1 billion sovereign loan guarantee for Kyiv to help it shore up its finances.
Biden has been the U.S. administration's point person in dealings with Ukraine and one of its staunchest supporters as Kyiv struggles with Russia's forcible annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the Russia-backed insurgency in the eastern Donbas region.