Head of the Verkhovna Rada Budget Committee Roksolana Pidlasa, citing data from the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Finance, said that the mobilization of 400,000 to 500,000 military personnel and additional needs for the purchase and modernization of military equipment may require an increase in the 2024 state budget expenditures by about UAH 700 billion.

"The Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Finance, together with the Verkhovna Rada committees, respectively the budget and defense, considered this, but I would not like to voice it publicly so as not to give to Russian OSINT analysts information that is unnecessary for them," Pidlasa said in a podcast of the Center for Economic Strategy (CES), explaining the lack of more accurate data.

However, she said that, according to departmental estimates, the mobilization of 400,000 to 500,000 people in 2024 would cost UAH 322 billion in additional expenses "just to clothe these people, teach them, feed them and pay them cash."

According to her, the Ministry of Defense at meetings on the issue of mobilization and open meetings of the defense committee [parliament] also voiced an additional need of about UAH 400 billion for the purchase and modernization of military equipment.

"That is, together we are now talking about an additional need for 2024 of about UAH 700 billion. Here you need to understand that UAH 700 billion is a huge amount, this is about 22.5% of all our expenses in 2024 and 41% of our defense expenses," Pidlasa said.

"All these conversations about where to get additional money into the budget are precisely a consequence of this need, because increasing your own revenues by 40% in a few months is a very non-trivial task," the head of the budget committee of the Verkhovna Rada said.