Ukraine may slash Armed Forces to 160,000 men in future

Ukraine is planning to slash the strength of its Armed Forces to 150,000 to 160,000 officers and men in the future from the current 200,000 men.

Ukraine is planning to slash the strength of its Armed Forces to 150,000 to 160,000 officers and men in the future from the current 200,000 men.

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Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Sivkovich told a news on Thursday that along with this the government allocations for the maintenance and development of the Armed Forces are due to go up to $354 million, since the main cause of the profound crisis the army is going through is the imbalance between the tasks it faces and the materiel it has.

According to him, the government will have to raise the allocations for the Armed Forces by 15 per cent to 20 per cent annually so as to ensure the minimum requirements for development.

Along with it, the spending should be optimised, the excessive military hardware should be sold off, and entirely new procedures for state procurements for the Armed Forces should be introduced.

Sivkovich said that, in addition to this, the authorities plan revising the patterns of placement of state orders for defence products.

The government has gotten down to designing a concept for the development of the Armed Forces through to 2015 and a special inter-departmental commission has been set up to do a defence review.

It includes officials from the Defence Ministry and other government departments, as well as researchers and experts.