MOSCOW, February 27 - RIA Novosti, Vladimir Yaduta. Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's lawsuit against RosUkrEnergo and its co-owner Dmitry Firtash, submitted to a New York federal court will be considered under a special pilot project.

Tymoshenko sued RosUkrEnergo's Swiss trader and Firtash, claiming that they misappropriated $1.7 billion with Gazprom and violated federal law, including the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

Tymoshenko's lawsuit is centered on a 2009 gas conflict after negotiations stalled between Kiev and Moscow on gas supplies to Ukraine and their transit to Europe.

In the absence of a supply contract, Russia stopped supplying gas to Ukraine and then to Europe as Kiev started siphoning off gas for its own needs.

Russia's Gazprom and Ukraine's Naftogaz refused mediators' services, particularly RosUkrEnergos, which eventually contested the ownership of 11 billion cubic meters of gas in the Stockholm Arbitration Tribunal.

Tymoshenko believes that yielding to Firtash's pressure, the tribunal obligated Naftogaz to return to RosUkrEnergo the gas taken in January 2009.

Tymoshenko earlier extended the list of defendants in her lawsuit against RosUkrEnergo and Firtash. It now includes Fuel and Energy Minister Yuri Boyko, head of the security service Valery Khoroshovski and Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka.

The list also names Semyon Mogilevich, whom the FBI has been hunting for years, Paul Manafort, President Viktor Yanukovych's political consultant, First Deputy General Prosecutor Renat Kuzmin, and prosecutor Lilya Frolova, who represents the prosecution in the trial against Tymoshenko.

The summonses have been sent to all the co-defendants.

The lawsuit against Tymoshenko will be considered as part of a pilot project launched by the court in November. The project is oriented around complicated civil suits.

These are, first and foremost, class suits, disputes between shareholders, antimonopoly disputes, and disputes dealing with securities, manufacturers liability, and intellectual property protection.

The project seeks to unify the proceedings in such complicated cases, particularly procedures in pretrial hearings.

The project was initiated in early 2011 by a New York court committee seeking to improve the legal proceedings headed by Shira Scheindlin considering the case of alleged arms dealer Viktor Bout.