What Ukraine's tripled deficit meant for its pandemic budget
A look back at the budget amendments adopted in April 2020 to fund the response to COVID-19.
What did Ukraine's parliament commit to when it reworked the national budget in the middle of a pandemic? By 16 April 2020, the answer had been settled three days earlier, on 13 April 2020, when the Verkhovna Rada adopted changes to the 2020 state budget needed to fight COVID-19.
The amendments provided for the budget deficit to rise threefold. That figure was the core of the decision: the state chose to widen the gap between spending and revenue in order to pay for the response to the coronavirus disease, rather than leave the original budget unchanged.
An international backdrop
On 15 April 2020, one day before the covered date, United States Space Command said that Russia had conducted a direct-ascent anti-satellite missile test. The report concerned a separate matter and was unrelated to the budget decision, but it shows that security news from Russia was circulating alongside Ukraine's domestic emergency measures.
Why it mattered
The tripled deficit marked a clear shift in fiscal priorities for 2020. Parliament placed the health emergency at the centre of the budget and accepted a much larger deficit as the cost of doing so.
