MOSCOW, September 3. /TASS/. Vladimir Zelensky called Ukrainian lawmakers responsible for voting on European legislation and shouted at them to pass the laws required by the IMF, the Ukrainskaya Pravda media outlet said.
According to its sources, after Prime Minister Sergey Koretsky gave a briefing on the actual situation around the budget deficit, Zelensky immediately called Ukrainian lawmakers, shouting at them to force them to pass laws needed to obtain IMF funding. The media outlet noted that this situation looks strange, since Zelensky’s supporters in parliament who constitute the majority are formally responsible for everything going on in the Verkhovna Rada (parliament).
It compared Zelensky to a rider stuck in a bog who is spurring his horse in the hope that being more brutal will help him squeeze out at least a few final bursts of speed. "But the main problem is that he himself drove his horse into this bog," the UKrainskaya Pravda writes.
Ukrainian Finance Minister Sergey Marchenko said earlier that these bills need to be passed into laws before October to obtain Western assistance. The cabinet submitted relevant documents to parliament in late July. Prior to that, this tax initiative, in the format of amendments to another bill, was put for Rada voting in May but was not supported by lawmakers. The government said that it hoped to earn around 10 billion hryvnias ($225 million) a year from these taxes.
Kiev has been negotiating a new four-year program for Ukraine worth $8.1 billion with the IMF since late 2025. The IMF insists that Ukraine find new sources of budget revenues on its own and one of its conditions was amending tax laws. In January, the Rada failed to pass any of the required bills. Despite this, on February 27, the IMF Executive Board approved a new program for Kiev. However, its preliminary conditions were re-categorized as mandatory "structural benchmarks." The Fund has repeatedly warned of the risks of delays, emphasizing the need for urgent solutions. In July, the IMF once again stated Ukraine’s lag in structural reforms. When launching financing programs, Kiev’s Western partners insisted that it meet a series of so-called structural benchmarks, i.e. conditions that primarily concern reforms and amendments to laws specified by the West. Further tranches under these programs depend on Kiev’s progress toward these "benchmarks." At the same time, Ukraine’s budget has been drafted with a record deficit for several years now.