Changes to the State Budget: Did the Government Really Increase Funding for the Army?

There was no real increase in the internal funding of the Ministry of Defense. Instead, the authorities redistributed European loan funds and cut their own defense capabilities by a huge amount.

This was stated on the air of “Pryamoy” by Nina Yuzhanina, a People’s Deputy of Ukraine from the “European Solidarity” faction, a member of the parliamentary committee on finance, tax, and customs policy.

“In fact, the Ministry of Defense was allocated loan funds under an agreement between Ukraine and the European Union… And if we say: “What did we do on our own?”, then we reduced the Ministry of Defense’s ability to purchase weapons by 40 billion on our own,” the studio guest emphasized.

The parliamentarian drew attention to the fact that the Budget Committee of the Verkhovna Rada supported changes to the 2026 state budget in the second reading. According to her, these changes are positioned as an increase in spending on security and defense by 1 trillion 560 billion hryvnias due to financial assistance from the European Union.

However, at the same time, 40 billion hryvnias were taken from the defense ministry, which were planned to be used to purchase domestically produced weapons, and transferred to a reserve fund that has not yet been formed, – added Nina Yuzhanina.

As a reminder, the government decided to withdraw 40 billion hryvnias from the Defense Ministry’s budget , which were planned to be spent on the purchase of weapons from its own revenues. However, these plans are now under threat, despite the Cabinet’s promises to replace financing with loans.

In addition, experts express concern over the actions of the Cabinet of Ministers, which is engaged in “ questionable redistribution of funds ” between budget items. In particular, it is about the withdrawal of 40 billion hryvnias from the defense sector to the reserve fund, which may stop the increase in military salaries.

Earlier on the air of “Pryamoy”, economic and political expert Pavlo Rozenko reported that the government is directing the resources of the Reserve Fund to programs that are not related to force majeure, in particular , to pay “Zelensky’s thousand” and national cashback . Such actions are a violation of the law, since these initiatives should be financed through amendments to the state budget in parliament, he emphasized.