Kyiv City Council approved the capital's budget for 2024 on Thursday, ignoring public calls to increase spending on the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The capital’s budget revenues for the next year are planned at UAH 72.6 billion ($1.9bn), while expenditures are more than UAH 85.3 billion ($2.3bn).
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Of this amount, UAH 1 billion hryvnias ($27m) is allocated to help the Armed Forces.
There was outrage on social media when Volodymyr Prokopiv, head of the European Solidarity faction in the Kyiv City Council, said during the vote that Kyiv did not need to focus the city budget on the war, that it should be the state's responsibility to do so, and that "cities should live their own lives."
"Some colleagues are demanding a war budget in the city. The city adopts the Kyiv city budget. The state should have a war budget... Do you want a war budget here [in Kyiv]? Make the state budget the budget of war, and cities should live their own lives," Prokopiv said.
Kyiv residents demanded that the city's budget should include funds for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and that city officials allocate funds from other budget items to the Kyiv Defender program.
People are also outraged that they periodically raise money for Ukrainian soldiers, while the city authorities are concerned with other issues such as, road paving, interchanges, bridges, that they say can wait until after the war.
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The protesters have the following demands:
- to remove 120 million from the water parks and transfer them to the Kyiv Defender program
- to create a service that will help with procurement for the Armed Forces
- public discussion of the budget for 2024
The protesters also demand that funds be allocated for rehabilitation clinics for the Ukrainian military.
According to an Ukrinform correspondent, the protesters came with posters saying "We do not need paving stones and parks. The Armed Forces need weapons and tanks", "Money for the Armed Forces", "Drones, not stadiums", "I should be in classes, but you don't know what a military budget is", "Your decisions are killing our tomorrow.”
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