KIEV, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine will maintain defense spending at about 5 percent of the its gross domestic product in 2018, said the head of the state's security agency on Wednesday.
"The defense budget would provide financing for priority tasks on strengthening the country's defense and security," said Oleksandr Turchynov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.
Ukraine plans to spend a total of 6.4 billion U.S. dollars on defense next year, of which more than 90 percent will be allocated from the general-purpose fund of the state budget, Turchynov said.
The 2018 defense budget will focus on boosting the financial well-being of Ukrainian servicemen and modernizing key state-run defense enterprises, he added.
After two decades of keeping its defense expenditures at below 1.5 percent of the GDP, Ukraine gradually started to boost its defense budget from 2014, when the conflict between government troops and independence-seeking insurgents burst out in eastern regions.
In 2016, the state's defense budget reached 5 percent of the GDP.
The Ukrainian government estimated that this year's spending on defense will also stand at 5 percent of the GDP.
