President Ukrainian He met with journalists on the eve of the Munich Security Conference. Wołodymyr Zelanski He admitted that The Ukrainian state budget is in a significant deficitand the issue of financing the army is critical.
At the same time, the politician reminded that Kremlin issued an order to increase the personal condition of the Russian army for another 150,000 people and this is to take place in the coming months.
– We have a deficit of $ 40 billion and everyone is helping us today. This is an army of 110 brigades, over 800,000 people. If Russia It will increase the number of our soldiers, we will need at least 1.5 times more soldiers. This means another $ 15-20 billion. Which is cheaper: soldiers NATO Is it? he asked.
War in Ukraine. President Zelanski on the contingent of NATO
In the further part of his speech, Wołodymyr Zelanski he referred to the issue of the “conciliation mission”. According to some European military commentators, NATO countries should decide to create such forces and relocate them on the territory of Ukraine.
President Zelnski, approaching the idea with a clear distance, emphasized that such The mission could only be effective with a very large number of soldiers.
– We will build “NATO in Ukraine” – we will get from you (from the west – ed.) Weapons and contingent of Europeans and Americans. There can be no five or seven thousand (soldiers) in the contingent, as they said. I recommended to count the army and we need 100,000 he said.