KIEV (Sputnik) — Ukraine is planning to allocate almost $333 million on the development and procurement of weapons in 2017, while the restoration of national air defense system will become the main priority for the country, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said Wednesday.
"This year 9 billion hryvnas will be allocated to the development and procurement of the new and modernized weapons and military equipment. Ukraine has never done that before," Poroshenko said at a session of the Ukrainian senior military officials.
Kiev is clashing with eastern Ukrainian militia in the Donbas region, with its military budget at a post-Soviet high and coming to around 5 percent GDP in 2015. In 2016, Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak said the budget had quadrupled since 2014 as the military rearmed with the aim of fully upgrading by 2020. The country has also been receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in defense and security assistance from the United States.
