According to an estimate by Roksolana Podlasa, head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Budget Matters, in 2026 a single day of the full-scale war costs the Ukrainian state budget $190 million. As reported by RBC-Ukraine, this figure covers the state's own expenditures only and does not include weapons, equipment, and ammunition provided by allies in kind. For comparison: in 2024, the cost of one day of defense stood at $140 million, meaning the indicator has grown by roughly a third in just two years.
Budget fails to cover its own defense spending for the first time
In the eight months of 2026, approximately $42 billion was allocated to national security and defense, according to Podlasa. At the same time, the country's own resources — the combined total of budget revenues and domestic government bonds — amounted to only $39 billion over the same period. This means that Ukraine is for the first time unable to cover even the portion of defense spending that it previously financed on its own. The defense forces have declared an additional financial need of $27 billion by the end of the year.
Strikes on revenue-generating sectors hit the treasury
The head of the budget committee emphasized that Russia is deliberately targeting precisely those economic sectors that generate the largest revenues for the budget. As a result, the budget lost $1.35 billion in domestic and import value-added tax (VAT) over the eight-month period, with a quarter of that amount lost already in August. Podlasa noted that $190 million a day is far from the limit, and spending will continue to rise.
The heaviest military burden in the world
Context for these figures is provided by a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI): Ukraine bears the heaviest military burden in the world. In 2024, defense spending reached 34 percent of GDP, compared with 3.8 percent in 2015, and $64.7 billion was spent on the army — 2.9 percent more than the year before. For comparison, according to calculations by Newsweek back in 2022, the war cost Russia approximately $900 million a day, including payments to soldiers, ammunition, and equipment repairs.
Call for faster action by allies
Podlasa linked the continued growth in spending to the pragmatic necessity for the United States and Europe to act faster to force Russia to end the war. In her words, the longer the conflict, the higher the daily price of defense for the Ukrainian budget, and the greater the dependence on external support in kind and financial forms.
