Ukraine to Audit Defense Ministry Amid Budget Shortfall

MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/. Ukraine’s government will carry out a thorough audit of the defense ministry to see where it might be able to save some money, the country’s Prime Minister Sergey Koretsky said.

"My task, and that of the entire government, will be to conduct a detailed audit of the defense ministry’s needs. We will thoroughly analyze all the issues over one month to ensure the most effective use of budget resources," he told the Ukrainian television channel Rada.

Olga Vasilevskaya-Smaglyuk, a lawmaker with the ruling Servant of the People party, said earlier that the hole in Ukraine’s budget amounts to 49.5 billion euro, with 26 billion euro being external financing Kiev counted on but failed to receive.

The lawmaker said, citing the prime minister, that the government has failed to draft and adopt 44 bills needed to ensure financing in the amount of 10.6 billion euro. The allocation of two more billion euro depends on the laws that have already been passed by parliament but have not yet been signed by Vladimir Zelensky. In addition, a sum of 5.5 billion euro depends on 17 bills "the cabinet should have drafted but has so far failed to do so."

For several years now, Ukraine has been drafting budgets with record deficits. Officials in Kiev acknowledge that the country has completely exhausted its own resources and that it is becoming increasingly difficult to secure funding. On August 20, Zelensky acknowledged that the lack of funds has become a major challenge, with the defense budget deficit alone reaching of $27 billion. As former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitriy Kuleba noted, no one in Kiev knows how to plug the hole in the budget.