The United States on Friday, April 13 called on Ukraine to release former defence minister Valeriy Ivashchenko, saying it was deeply disappointed by his five-year prison sentence on abuse of office charges, AFP reported.

"We are deeply disappointed in this latest example of selective justice in Ukraine and call for his release, particularly given the state of his health after 18 months in pre-trial detention," the U.S. embassy in Kiev said in a statement.

Ivashchenko became the third minister in the pro-Western government of the jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko to have been put in prison in the two years since her presidential rival Viktor Yanukovych took office.

Ex-interior minister Yuriy Lutsenko was in February sentenced to four years in jail while former environment and natural resources minister Georgiy Filipchuk was in April sentenced to three years.

The Kiev district court on April 12 sentenced Ivashchenko for overseeing a November 2009 land privatisation deal that allegedly cost the state budget nearly $10 million dollars.

Former Orange Revolution leader Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in jail in October over a 2009 natural gas agreement she agreed with Russia in a verdict that has for the moment wrecked Kiev's ambitions of joining the EU.