Military warehouses should have enough weapons and equipment for the military, said Finance Minister Sergiy Marchenko. In addition, the state budget and local authorities allocate tens of billions of hryvnias to the army.
Every day, UAH 5 billion is allocated from the state budget of Ukraine for the needs of the Armed Forces. In addition, a certain amount is allocated by local budgets. Therefore, it is not clear why volunteers are still announcing fundraisers to buy things for the Defense Forces – the available resources should be enough. Minister of Finance Sergiy Marchenko spoke about the details of financing the Armed Forces in an interview with Forbes Ukraine.
The journalists asked the minister why Ukrainians and the military “chip in” with certain amounts of money to buy the necessary equipment. Marchenko noted that volunteers cannot compete with the state’s ability to support the army. In particular, UAH 5 billion is spent daily from the state budget on the Armed Forces. Local authorities contribute to this amount. In particular, they have the opportunity to allocate UAH 15-20 billion for the army every day. That is, if there is no money in the state budget, the army will hold out for another 3-4 days only at the expense of these funds. Meanwhile, volunteers and non-governmental organizations are still raising funds for the military.
“I myself do not understand why we are still providing military personnel with a share,” the minister said.
According to the official, there should be enough weapons and military equipment in military warehouses. Therefore, you should not ask him, but rather the “specific executives” who are responsible for this area.
The minister also spoke about financing the mobilization of 500 thousand people. The number of people mentioned by Zelenskyy in his speech is 500 billion hryvnias for this number of new military personnel. Marchenko emphasized that this figure is very approximate, as it was derived from the general calculation: today, one million people in the Ukrainian army spend 1 trillion hryvnias.
It should be noted that on the Opendatabot portal, based on open data from the largest volunteer foundations in Ukraine, you can find out how much collected by Ukrainians for the needs of the army. As of October 2023, it is UAH 12.5 billion for 9 months.
