MOSCOW, November 17. Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov considers Ukraine bankrupt — in his opinion, the country is not able to fill its budget on its own, and 75% of the money are grants or loans .
“The crisis in Ukraine began a long time ago, and the bankruptcy of Ukraine has already been recorded. This bankruptcy is manifested in the fact that the country is not able to fill its budget on its own. 75% of the budget is borrowed or grant funds! And they have reached such a point that salaries in October depended on whether the European Union would transfer the promised assistance in the amount of 1.5 billion euros on time,” Azarov wrote on his page on the social network.
In November, the National Bank of Ukraine worsened its expectations for the country's consolidated budget deficit at the end of 2023: it now expects it to be at the level of 20.4% of GDP instead of 19.8%. This would be the highest level since 1992. Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmygal said on November 10 that Kyiv expects to receive financial assistance in the amount of more than $30 billion from the European Union, the United States and the IMF, as well as allied states, to cover the country's state budget deficit.
Earlier, the Politico newspaper, citing the head of the Ukrainian Ministry of Finance, Sergei Marchenko, reported that Ukraine, without the help of allies in the West, faces a hole in the budget for 2024 in the amount of $29 billion. Verkhovna Rada deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak reported in early November that the Ukrainian parliament had adopted in the second and final reading the draft budget for 2024 with a deficit of 1.57 trillion hryvnia (more than 43 billion dollars).