President Petro Poroshenko on Saturday, October 15 will give the army a new batch of military equipment.
"If we want to survive as a nation, as a people, as a state, we should spend at least 5% of our GDP on the armed forces and security. If you look at these costs on the scale of world prices for weapons and equipment, if you compare our budget with those of other countries, it is clear that we are acting in the limited and very modest budget," Poroshenko said on Friday, 14 October, at the events dedicated to the Day of the Defender of Ukraine.
"Let me give you one example: there's much-discussed dispute between two European countries on the contract for the supply of helicopters. These 50 helicopters cost more than 3 billion euros. We should need dozens, if not hundreds, helicopters like these. However, our entire defense budget does not even reach 60% of this sum. Next year it will be at 64 billion [hryvnya]," Poroshenko said.
Nevertheless, the president stressed, Ukraine is using the available resources as efficiently as possible. This year, our military received over about 2,000 units of armaments and military equipment.
It is planned to spend 11bn hryvnia on the purchase of equipment next year.
Poland halted talks with French company Airbus to buy 50 of its Caracal helicopters for around 3.14bn euros (£2.8bn / $3.51bn) on Tuesday.
Warsaw said the contract was not in the country's economic and security interests.