Nearly UAH 60 billion, which was freed up following a large-scale internal audit of the Ministry of Defense, has become the financial foundation for the first stage of the transformation of the Defense Forces, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov announced.
"To launch the first stage of the army reform, we have already adopted the regulatory acts and have already announced that this reform kicks off in June. We have been working on it for the past four months, starting immediately after my appointment. This year, more than UAH 60 billion is required just to carry out this reform," Fedorov said in an interview with the PRESSING YouTube channel, produced jointly with Armia Media.
He noted that these funds were found internally within the Ministry of Defense thanks to internal optimization: "We stop buying what doesn’t need to be bought, we conduct competitive tenders, and we begin saving where savings can be made."
"If we had waited for someone to come and provide a budget or for our partners to do so, we might not have started the reform this year at all, and we might have missed the window to begin it entirely. Therefore, of course, we won’t be able to make everything perfect for everyone and raise financial allowances for everyone in the very first step. But we can move closer to fairness, establish rules of the game, show light at the end of the tunnel, and give the people fighting for our freedom the opportunity to plan their own lives. We have found internal resources for this, and we will find them for all subsequent steps of this reform," the minister stated.
In turn, Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine Mstyslav Banik reported that the funds to implement the major army reform, which includes increasing military salaries, were sourced directly from the Defense Ministry’s own budgets.
