Under the chairmanship of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) was held, at which the budget for the security and defense sector for 2022 was discussed.
Based on the results of the discussion, the NSDC decided to recommend to the government, when preparing the draft state budget for next year, to increase funding for the security and defense sector to 5.95% of GDP, or UAH 319.4 billion (from 5.93% of GDP in 2021).
Extra funds are planned to be appropriated to increase financial support for the military and police, provide housing, deliver the latest weapons and implement a number of other programs.
The National Security and Defense Council also considered the issue of admitting foreign military personnel from NATO countries to conduct the Joint Effort 2021 military drills, which will begin in September.
In addition, the issue of imposing sanctions against persons involved in the preparation and conduct of elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation in the occupied territories of Crimea and Donbas was discussed at the meeting of the NSDC. In particular, restrictive measures will be applied to candidates for deputies, members of election commissions, agitators, observers and the like.
"We want to warn all foreign citizens who intend to participate in this farce on the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, on the territory of Crimea: if they appear there as official observers or some other persons during the elections, they will definitely be subject to sanctions," NSDC Secretary Oleksiy Danilov said at a briefing at the President's Office following the meeting of the National Security and Defense Council.
The meeting participants also were briefed on the creation of an information and analytical system for monitoring persons who are subject to the law on de-oligarchization at the Office of the National Security and Defense Council if this document is adopted in the Verkhovna Rada. The system has three levels of operation and can work both with documents available to the public and with top secret documents.
The issue of compulsory implementation of the presidential decrees, which put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council, was also considered at the NSDC meeting. The head of state instructed the NSDC Secretary to control the preparation of reports from ministries and departments on the implementation of decisions of the National Security and Defense Council.
In addition, the members of the National Security and Defense Council considered the issue of eliminating technical inaccuracies in the previous decisions of the NSDC.