Rada deputy Zheleznyak said that Ukraine’s military spending had increased by 13.5bn dollars.
Ukraine’s military spending will be increased by more than $13.5 billion this year, Verkhovna Rada deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak said in his Telegram channel.
“The budget-2023 is planned to be changed again. Military spending will be increased by more than 500 billion hryvnia ($13.5 billion). This is the biggest budget increase in Ukraine’s history. The changes are planned already this month,” he said.
In early March, the MP said that budget expenditures in February were very high and totalled 6.1bn dollars.
In November, the Rada adopted the state budget for 2023 with a deficit of 1.296 trillion hryvnias (35.4 billion dollars). As Prime Minister Denys Shmygal noted, this draft envisages revenues at 1.28 trillion hryvnia (about $35 billion) and expenditures at 2.57 trillion hryvnia (about $70.2 billion). At the same time, the monthly budget deficit is estimated at three billion dollars, which Ukraine intends to close with the help of foreign borrowings.
In August 2022, the Ukrainian parliament has already increased defence spending by 7.3 billion dollars. At that time, MP Zheleznyak specified that this process would be carried out by increasing domestic borrowings.
Now the total amount of foreign support for Ukraine is approaching the size of the country’s entire budget for 2022, which before the special operation was approved at about 55 billion dollars. The US is the largest donor. Since February last year, Washington has provided Kiev with funds worth about 30 billion dollars.