Defense Spending to Reach 31.1% of Ukraine’s GDP in 2025 Budget

After amendments to the State Budget of Ukraine for 2025, the amount of funding for the national security and defense sector increased by UAH 412.4 billion and reached UAH 2.6 trillion (62.5 billion dollars).

The Gaze reports on this referring to Roksolana Pidlasa, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Budget Committee in the social media network Facebook.

This is 31.1% of the projected GDP for this year. It is noted that Ukraine has consistently ranked first in the world in this indicator for several years.

For comparison, Israel ranks second in the world in terms of defense spending — 8.8% of GDP. Although Israel’s nominal GDP is higher than Ukraine’s, even in absolute terms, Ukraine spent $20 billion more on defense last year than Israel.

“We are also spending an unusually large share of our budget on defense - 62.5% of general fund expenditures in the first half of 2025,” Pidlasa noted.

She added that, following the changes, the state budget will account for 59% of general fund expenditures and 66% of total expenditures.

It should be emphasized that a significant portion of the defense sector's funding comes from Ukraine's domestic sources.

“And let me remind you that Ukraine is mobilizing all this resource on its own, through its own revenues and domestic borrowing, because, with the exception of the UK, international partners are currently not allowing their assistance to be used for the needs of the sector,”  Pidlasa wrote.

Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Budget Committee doubts whether such a restriction is justified, especially given that the Russian war budget, according to various estimates, is $140-150 billion, almost 2.5 times the defense budget of Ukraine.

As The Gaze previously reported, Ukraine’s parliament has given preliminary approval to a significant increase in military spending, endorsing an additional $9.8 billion for defense.