The Ukrainian parliament can pass a tax on parcels, meet reform requirements, and unlock another billions in external funding. This will help the state pay pensions, salaries, and civil expenditures. However, the main budgetary problem in Kyiv lies in a different account: the additional defense financing deficit is estimated to be around $27 billion.
In the Verkhovna Rada, they are once again counting votes as money.
After the parliament failed in its first attempt to adopt a tax on foreign parcels worth up to €150, the government returned the bills. On September 16, the Rada already supported them in the first reading. According to the parliamentary finance committee's estimates, the previous failure could jeopardize around €4 billion in potential EU and IMF funding, while the tax itself is estimated to bring in about 10 billion UAH in additional revenue annually.
The political logic is clear.
If you don’t meet the conditions — you don’t get the money.
If you do — you get.
The problem is that this formula creates a dangerous illusion: as if it is enough to vote for all the requirements of Brussels and the IMF — and Ukraine's budgetary problem disappears.
It doesn’t disappear.
Because Ukraine essentially has two deficits.
The money that fixes one does not necessarily fix the other.
€4 billion for one vote
For the deputies, the government’s argument seems almost indecently convincing.
On one hand — an unpopular tax on cheap import purchases.
On the other — billions of euros in foreign funding critically necessary for the state.
The mathematics of voting is obvious.
And the EU is indeed tying disbursements under the Ukraine Facility to the fulfillment of reforms. A separate baseline requirement of the program is adherence to democratic mechanisms, the rule of law, and the rights of individuals belonging to minorities. Payments are made in tranches after assessing the fulfillment of the relevant conditions.
This is normal lender logic.
If Brussels finances the functioning of the Ukrainian state, it wants to see reforms, control over the use of funds, and the gradual alignment of Ukrainian legislation with European law.
However, this does not imply that each unblocked European billion can be automatically sent to the front.
Two accounts of one war
This is where the Ukrainian budget anomaly begins.
The state must simultaneously finance two huge systems.
The first — civil.
Pensions.
Social payments.
Budget workers' salaries.
Healthcare.
Education.
The functioning of the government apparatus.
The support of macro-financial stability, public services, recovery and reforms is the central purpose of the Ukraine Facility. The program anticipates up to €50 billion in support in 2024-2027.
The second account — military.
Personnel.
Ammunition.
Fuel.
Drones.
Equipment.
Repairs.
Fortifications.
And it is here that an additional unclosed need of about $27 billion arose in 2026. Reuters reported on September 16 that the Ukrainian authorities estimate this amount as the shortfall for additional defense expenditures.
This is the number that cannot be eliminated by voting for a tax on parcels.
Not all European money is civilian
However, an important clarification is needed here.
It would be incorrect to claim that the EU cannot legally finance Ukrainian defense at all.
The old Ukraine Facility structure is indeed primarily oriented towards macro-financial stability, recovery, public services, and reforms. But the new EU package for 2026-2027, amounting to €90 billion, was directly created for Ukraine's budgetary and military needs.
Therefore, the problem is more complex than the formula 'the EU is prohibited from paying for the army'.
It is more accurate to say:
civilian aid programs and military financing have different mechanisms, conditions, and schedules. Unblocking one does not mean automatically closing the other.
This very difference gets lost in political discourse.
$190 million per day
The scale of the problem is best illustrated by the pace of expenditures.
According to Reuters, Ukraine's military expenditures in the first eight months of the year reached about $42 billion, while domestic revenues and borrowings amounted to approximately $39 billion. The current cost of the war was estimated at about $190 million per day.
This is nearly $8 million per hour.
At such a pace, the budget begins to behave like a car’s gas tank with a punctured bottom.
The question is no longer just how much fuel to pour in.
The question is — how fast it is leaking.
And it is here where the scale of the parcel tax is particularly evident.
Big scandal, small money
The expected revenues from taxing small international parcels are estimated at about 10 billion UAH annually.
For an ordinary tax bill, this is a significant amount.
For a war costing $190 million a day — it is almost a statistical error.
Even if all the additional income is hypothetically directed exclusively to defense, it does not change the strategic picture.
That’s why the political noise surrounding €150 is misleading.
The tax is important not so much because it will fill the Ukrainian treasury itself.
Its main value is in its role as a key to significantly larger external funds.
Ten billion hryvnias can help the budget.
Billion euros in external funding can sustain the state.
But even they do not automatically eliminate the defense gap.
$27 billion is a different league
The scale becomes clear when comparing orders of magnitude.
Ukraine is lacking approximately $27 billion in additional defense financing.
This is not a deficit that can be closed with a new duty, excise, or by fighting a few tax exemptions.
This is already a macroeconomic magnitude.
To cover it, a combination of much more serious solutions is needed:
internal borrowings, additional taxes, military aid from partners, special European mechanisms, arms procurement by allies for Ukraine, or the use of revenues and potentially even the frozen Russian assets.
That’s why the government can successfully negotiate with the IMF, meet all European indicators — and still wake up the next morning with a military gap in the tens of billions.
Civilian rear is also a weapon
On the other hand, it would be equally mistaken to call civil financing secondary.
If the EU finances part of Ukraine's civil needs, it effectively releases the state’s internal revenues for defense.
A European euro spent on a teacher's salary does not become an artillery shell.
But it allows the Ukrainian hryvnia, which otherwise would have to be spent on that teacher, to go to the Ministry of Defense.
Therefore, the division between civilian and military money is legally real.
Economically it is significantly less clean.
External support for the civil budget is indirectly one of the foundations of Ukraine’s ability to finance the war.
This explains why the government reacts so nervously to every blocked tranche.
The Rada can buy time
Thus, meeting Brussels' conditions is not pointless.
On the contrary.
If voting opens access to billions in external funding, refusing it in the face of such budgetary strain costs extremely dearly.
But it is important to understand what these votes are actually buying.
They help maintain the civil state.
They reduce the need to print money.
They support currency stability.
They allow us not to take even more resources from the domestic economy.
And thus free part of Ukraine's money for the army.
This is a lot.
But it is not $27 billion in new military funds.
The illusion of completed homework
Here lies the politically dangerous illusion.
Brussels sets conditions.
The Rada votes.
The tranche is unlocked.
The government reports success.
In a peaceful country, this story could end here.
In a warring Ukraine, after completing homework, there remains another bill — and it’s the biggest.
Given the current intensity of the war, the problem of state finances is no longer about whether Kyiv will meet the creditors’ requirements. It is about whether Ukraine and its partners can create a separate, sufficiently large and predictable mechanism for financing the war itself.
Therefore, the Verkhovna Rada can indeed unlock billions.
It can save the civil budget from a much sharper crisis.
It can fulfill all the tables of the European Commission and the IMF.
But the arithmetic of the front doesn’t disappear from this.
European conditions may open the cash register. Ukraine’s problem is that the biggest bill lies at another window.