Chinese Vice-Premier Zhang Gaoli will attend a ground-breaking ceremony for the Sino-Russian east route gas project in Russian during his visit to Turkmenistan, the Czech Republic and Russia from Tuesday to Monday next week, foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Monday.

The CEO of Russian energy company Gazprom, Aleksey Miller, has told Chinese Ambassador to Russia Li Hui that the construction of a natural gas pipeline from Irkutsk to Vladivostok, with a branch line to China, was set to start from September 1.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart witnessed the two countries reached the deal on natural gas supply on May 21, under which Russia will start providing natural gas to China from 2018.