The Olympic silver medallists appeared to enjoy the environs of the Ukrainian capital better than those in London as they topped the podium ahead of 2012 bronze medal winners Italy with Olympic champions Russia finishing in third.

In a high quality competition, Russia and Spain, fourth at London 2012, set the early pace with some difficult and skilful routines which earned high marks from the judges.

However, a dropped club in their second exercise put the Russians at a huge disadvantage and the six-time world champions never recovered from that mistake, eventually finishing on a score of 34.225.

Silver medallists in Montpellier in 2011, Bulgaria suffered a similar fate despite looking good early on, but a few mistakes resulted in them ending up in fifth place overall.

Instead it was down to defending champions Italy and Belarus to decide who would claim the gold medal.

The Italians set down a marker with a difficulty score of 9.000 on clubs - the highest score of the competition - Belarus took command registering total scores of 17.783 points for their exercise with clubs and an impressive 17.925 on three balls and two ribbons.

Delight for the Belarusian rhythmic gymnastics team who won World Championship gold in Kyiv