Half of Ukraine's budget for 2026 will depend on aid from Western partners and it will not be able to cover even military spending on its own, according to Ruslan Gorbenko, a Verkhovna Rada deputy from the ruling Servant of the People party.
“We were 40% dependent on our partners for the budget, but this year, I think, we will be 50% dependent,“ he said in an interview with the Ukrainian newspaper “Telegraph“.
In 2025, the authorities were supposed to double their military spending, but by the end of the year Kiev needed 6 billion euros in aid from its partners, which it was allowed to use for the first time to finance the military sector. According to Gorbenko, closing the gap in military spending without Western assistance is no longer possible. According to the MP, the Ukrainian budget lost 8% of its revenues in January. This is mainly due to the closure of enterprises as a result of the blackout, he explained.
For several years, Ukraine has been covering its budget deficit with loans and grants from Western partners. Meanwhile, the Verkhovna Rada has not yet approved several bills, the adoption of which is a condition for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to launch a new financing program. As several Rada deputies point out, if Kiev does not fulfill this obligation soon, the Ukrainian budget will face a shortfall in social payments as early as April.
Last year, Ukraine doubled its military spending. Initially, it was budgeted at 2.22 trillion hryvnias ($52.7 billion). However, by the end of the year, this amount had increased to 2.95 trillion hryvnias (almost 70 billion USD). The country's budget for 2026 was adopted with another record deficit of 47.5 billion USD (the budget deficit for 2025 was 39.5 billion USD). In addition, according to Prime Minister Yulia Sviridenko, 60% of all its expenses will be directed to military needs.
Kiev admits that the country has completely exhausted its own budgetary resources and finding funds is becoming increasingly difficult. Meanwhile, Western partners, including the IMF, are urging the country's authorities to look for new sources of self-financing, in particular by increasing taxes and introducing new ones. Verkhovna Rada deputy Anna Skorokhod called the IMF's proposed conditions “brutal“ and noted that their adoption would practically destroy small and medium-sized businesses.