Ukraine's government is planning to spend nearly 60% of GDP in 2027 — despite the IMF treating that year as a peacetime baseline in its core scenario. The country's national debt will reach 137% of GDP by the end of that year and will not fall below 100% until 2035. The tax demands being presented as IMF conditions are not driven by the international lender itself, but by Ukraine's own elites, who are unwilling to live within their means.
This was stated by economist Daniil Monin during a broadcast with Yuriy Romanenko, in which he analysed Ukraine's new IMF programme.
Monin said it was the budget figures themselves that convinced him the authorities had effectively planned for war through 2026–2027. "The budget deficit in the new IMF programme for 2027 stands at over 17% of GDP — practically wartime levels," he noted. Yet on closer reading, he found that the IMF does in fact treat 2027 as a peacetime year in its baseline scenario. The real issue lies elsewhere: the Ukrainian side is independently insisting on expenditure of 59–60% of GDP even under peace conditions, while its own revenues amount to roughly 40% of GDP.
According to Monin, this gap is explained not by defence needs but by the logic of spending whatever money is available. "If money is being given, it must be spent to the maximum," was how he described the approach of Ukraine's elites. Just six months ago, the authorities agreed to a deficit of 9.8% of GDP; now they are ready to expand it to nearly 19%. The result is that national debt will grow from 100% of GDP today to 137% by the end of 2027 — meaning the country will be adding 40–50 billion dollars in new obligations every year. According to the IMF's own projections, the debt will not fall below 100% of GDP until 2035.
The IMF does not state outright that Ukraine is heading for default, but the numbers speak for themselves, Monin stressed. "In practice, Ukraine is moving toward a very concrete default," he said, adding that a creditor seeking to recover its money is forced to demand tax hikes in response to the Ukrainian side's spending appetite. The tax burden target written into the IMF programme through 2035 stands at 39% of GDP — exceeding the levels of all of Ukraine's neighbours and comparable to recession-hit Germany.
Monin also refuted the claim, actively promoted by the head of the Rada's budget committee, that Ukraine will lose EU funding if the IMF programme falls through. The actual dependency, he argued, runs in the opposite direction: "The IMF would never have launched this programme had the EU not voted on 18 December to commit 90 billion euros." It is European financing that guarantees the IMF will get its money back. Everything else — tax benchmarks, talk of reforms, threats of financial catastrophe — is, in Monin's assessment, a set of tools used by Finance Minister Marchenko, Getmantsev and their circle to push through their own decisions under someone else's banner.