MOSCOW, September 1. /TASS/. The Ukrainian government has introduced strict austerity measures for non-military spending, Prime Minister Sergey Koretsky stated.

"The government is introducing a strict austerity regime for budget funds not allocated to defense needs," he said on the Ukrainian TV channel Rada.

Earlier, Olga Vasilevskaya-Smaglyuk, an MP from the ruling Servant of the People party, reported that Ukraine faces a financial shortfall of €49.5 billion. Of this amount, approximately €26 billion was expected in external funding, but it's now become clear this money won't come.

For several years, Ukraine has run huge deficits. Kiev acknowledges that the country has completely exhausted its own resources and that money is becoming hard to come by. On August 20, Zelensky admitted that the lack of funds had become a major challenge, noting that the defense budget alone is $27 billion over. As former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba noted, no one in Kiev knows how to stop the budget-bleeding.