Russia’s military budget is more than twice as large as Ukraine’s in 2024. Support from international partners is crucial – Minister Marchenko
The Minister of Finance of Ukraine, Serhii Marchenko, stated in an interview with the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera that Ukraine’s budget for the military campaign in 2024 is 40,700,000,000 dollars USD, while Russia’s budget is $115,000,000,000 dollars USD, more than 2.5 times higher.
According to him, the support of the United States is crucial for Ukraine. For this reason, Ukraine hopes the US administration will find a solution to preserve it.
Serhii Marchenko“We are allocating all State Budget revenues and domestic borrowings to finance the military campaign. Without the support of our international partners, we would have had to reduce non-military spending significantly,” he said.
Serhii Marchenko explained that the share of military expenditures is over 50% of the total budget and about 21% of GDP in 2024. Ukraine’s financial needs for external assistance in 2024 are estimated at $41,000,000,000 dollars USD.
From his standpoint, it is in the West’s interest to support Ukraine to protect all other countries from “the spread of the Russian imperialist disease”. If Ukraine fails, Russia may attack other countries.
The Minister of Finance of Ukraine expressed gratitude to the European Commission for the proposal to launch the Ukraine Facility for 2024-2027 in the amount of 50,000,000,000 euros. We expect this mechanism to be launched in the coming months.
Serhii Marchenko is sure that the reason for what is happening in the Middle East is also due to the international community’s insufficient response to Russia’s war against Ukraine.
“If we had enough assistance to win in 2022, we could have avoided this situation in the Middle East,” the minister added.
By way of background, during the genocidal war against the Ukrainian people, the totalitarian Russian Federation is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Russia unlawfully deports Ukrainian children to its territory. According to the National Information Bureau, as of August 2023, it has deported or brought out 19,546 children from Ukraine. This number includes only children whose names and circumstances of deportation are known. Ukrainian authorities state that the number of deported children is unknown because they cannot access the temporarily occupied territories. In total, 386 children have been successfully returned.
As for now, it is impossible to determine the exact number of casualties, as Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and the representatives of the ICC have no access to the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
The full-scale invasion by Russia forced 6.1 million Ukrainians to flee abroad. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates that about 8 million citizens have been internally displaced.
