Defence and security spending increased sixfold after 24 February, Finance Ministry

Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko told this in an interview with RBC-Ukraine.

We have stable expenditures such as education, social protection, health care and others. And the military budget increased sixfold, now it is 31.7 percent of GDP, almost half of the budget goes to the security and defence sector.

At the same time, he said, when talking about budget savings, one should not particularly count on streamlining ministries and reducing the number of officials.

Firstly, it would be a big expense in case of a massive reduction of officials. Secondly, there are not many quality personnel in the system, it is important to preserve them, so any changes should not lead to the loss of manageability of the system of state power.

It is worth noting that the priority of the adopted state budget for 2023 is to ensure the victory of Ukraine in the war, so the total resource for national security and defence for the next year is more than 1 trillion UAH.