The proposed Hr 101.4 ($3.6 billion) defense budget for 2019, the highest ever, is still not enough to meet all of the military’s needs, Ukrainian Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak told the cabinet on Nov. 14.
“We face lots of challenges today,” the minister said during the regular weekly meeting of the government.
“The continuing hostilities (in the Donbas war zone) took up significant funds. Some 40,000 military personnel (deployed there) are losing their health or lives, and, as I believe, there can be no higher priority than the procurement of new weapons and military hardware.”
“However, the financial resources proposed for procurement won’t allow us to acquire the full amount of hardware we need on the frontline.”
Poltorak added that the proposed military spending for 2019 was not enough to cover all expenses on fully maintaining the 25 combat brigades formed over the past few years.
“There are also a lot of problems with allocating funds to build up reserve supplies in the case of overt aggression (from Russia),” the minister said.
He said the serious funding shortages were one of the reasons for the series of fires and explosions at the army’s strategic munition depots that have taken place over the past few years in Ukraine.
“This has long been a problem,” he said. “It hasn’t been resolved for years. Most of the bases and arsenals where the emergencies happened were subject to cuts. Moreover, the proper amount of resources was never allocated, and the respective (government) officials did not order the moving of these munitions to other bases.”
Funding for the guarding and improvement of military depots remains completely insufficient, Poltorak said.
“For the second year in a row we get Hr 500 million ($18 million),” he said. “Hr 500 is envisioned for next year. That’s not even enough for the construction of the 15 new warehouses we started this year.”
“But we also planned to build another three arsenals, and we would have needed (even more funding) to make sure they were operational.”
Because of the underfunding of depot maintenance, Ukraine is losing expensive munitions that are difficult to produce, and as a consequence of the explosions has to spend millions on repairing infrastructure, Poltorak said.
He urged the government and President Petro Poroshenko to discuss the possibility of increasing defense and security spending in the 2019 state budget.
According to the draft bill on the 2019 state budget submitted to the Verkhovna Rada on Sept. 15, the Ukrainian defense and security sector will have a total budget of Hr 209.5 billion ($7.45 billion) next year.
If approved, the 2019 spending will set a new record and be 21.1 percent more than the Hr 165.3 billion ($6.1 billion) allocated in 2018.
The new defense budget will probably reach approximately 5.9 percent of the country’s estimated gross domestic product in 2019, which the International Monetary Fund has forecast at $126.7 billion.
However, even though Ukraine massively increased its defense spending after 2014 in the wake of Russia’s military aggression in the Donbas, bringing it to at least 5 percent of GDP, the country’s Defense Ministry has repeatedly sought even higher military spending each year.
According to Poltorak, the defense budget in 2018 was only 60 percent of the amount requested by the Defense Ministry.
