How much has Odesa spent on Ukraine’s Defence Forces?
Late on 31 August, a post appeared on the city’s mayor’s page
stating that the city had already allocated 897 million hryvnias to Ukraine’s Defence Forces. The money had supposedly been allocated under two municipal targeted programmes.
Trust, but verify!
Let us try to establish where this figure came from and which municipal
programmes were involved. An analysis of their contents suggests the mayor was referring to
the following:
1The municipal targeted programme to support the development of territorial
defence units and volunteer formations of the Odesa territorial community for
2022–2025.
2.The municipal targeted programme “Safe City of Odesa” for 2020–2024.
It is worth noting that these programmes are absent from the city’s official
website. However, we can find them through decisions amending them during the full-scale invasion.
Under the first municipal programme, all expenditure falls under the programme
expenditure classification code 8240 “Territorial defence measures and activities”. We
will subsequently use the expenditure figures under this code. In
2022, these expenditures were distributed among nine chief spending units; in 2023, among six.
Under the second programme, expenditure is recorded under three programme
expenditure classification codes for the chief spending unit, the Department of Municipal Security
of Odesa City Council:
1. 8120 Measures to organise water rescue services.
2. 8230 Other public order and security measures..
3. 9800 A subsidy from the local budget to the state budget for
implementation of regional socioeconomic development programmes.
As you might expect, the code 8120 does not cover expenditure on Ukraine’s Defence
Forces. There is also reason to doubt that such expenditure is covered by the code 8230, especially since in 2022
the programme provided financing under this code of
10.6 million hryvnias, and in 2023, 11 million hryvnias. This leaves only the code
9800.
Let us bring together the figures for these codes in a table, using data
both from the state system openbudget.gov.uaand from amendments to
the city budget decisions made twice during August, in thousands of hryvnias:
We can see that, in total, during 2022 and the first seven months of 2023, actual
expenditure on Ukraine’s Defence Forces amounted to 380 million hryvnias. Whether another 517 million hryvnias was actually spent in August, as the mayor claims, or whether he has confused something,
we will not be able to establish before 25 September, when
the Treasury’s reports on the execution of local budgets for January–August 2023
will be ready. We shall wait.