MOSCOW, Jan. 7 (Sputnik) - The budget deficit of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry for 2024 is 36% or 430 billion hryvnias ($11.33 billion), a member of the Ukrainian parliament, Oleksiy Goncharenko, said on Saturday.

"At a meeting of the National Security Committee, information was announced about the budget deficit of the Ministry of Defense for 2024. It amounts to 36% or 430 billion hryvnias only in terms of monetary support expenses," Goncharenko stated on Telegram.

The head of the Ukrainian parliament's tax committee, Danylo Hetmantsev, said in November that Ukraine's state budget was critically dependent on external assistance and that Kiev needed to attract about $9.5 billion in financial support in the form of grants and soft loans by the end of the year. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Ukraine expected to receive over $30 billion in financial aid from the European Union, the United States, the allied states and the IMF to compensate for the state budget deficit.

On September 15, Shmyhal said that the Ukrainian government adopted a draft budget for 2024 with record military spending of $45.6 billion, which exceeded the spending on the social sphere, medicine and education. The Ukrainian Ministry of Finance said later that the draft budget for 2024 provided for spending on security and defense of more than $48 billion, which is 23% of the country’s GDP.

In late November, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law on Ukraine's 2024 state budget with a deficit of over $43 billion.

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