The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated that a financing gap of $65 billion for 2026-2029, needed to be found by Ukraine’s partners, a well-placed source told Kyiv Post.
“It’s the financing gap that needs to be closed for a new program,” the source told Kyiv Post.
It was stated by Bloomberg citing its own sources that the IMF “persuaded” Ukraine’s government to accept the fund’s estimated foreign financing requirement.
However, a source in Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance told Kyiv Post it “could not [currently] confirm the calculations given in the Bloomberg article.”
Ukraine’s government will receive $37.4 billion in international financing covering a two-year period, but “the same amount remains uncovered,” Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance had previously told Kyiv Post.
Ukraine’s National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), forecast in its baseline scenario that Ukraine will receive $35 billion in 2026, and $30 billion in 2027. Ukraine has not yet found sources to finance the remaining $12.7 billion for Ukraine’s needs in 2026, and $29 billion for 2027, Deputy NBU Governor Sergiy Nikolaychuk previously said presenting the macroeconomic forecast for Ukraine until the end of 2025.
Bloomberg wrote that Ukraine’s government will need to increase “its projections of additional funding the country will need through the end of 2027 in the face of the protracted Russian invasion”.
The updated figure will serve to prepare the new IMF program for Ukraine. “The teams are working on the numbers, but the magnitude is there,” Kyiv Post’s source said.
On Sept. 20, Ukraine’s Minister of Finance Serhiy Marchenko held a series of bilateral meetings in Copenhagen with finance and economy ministers of the G7 and EU countries, as well as representatives of the European Commission and the IMF.
It might be that the latest figures were discussed in Copenhagen, the source speculated.
Bloomberg wrote the revised figures come after talks with the Washington-based lender and has already been shared with the European Commission.
A new IMF program is being considered as one option to help address the country’s financing needs, since Ukraine is facing another year of Russia’s full-scale invasion as ceasefire talks have up to now failed to bring results.
The size of a new IMF loan has not been formally discussed, but early estimates put it at about $8 billion, Bloomberg wrote. Ukraine’s current $15.6 billion program with the IMF expires in 2027, and most of the funds under it have already been committed.
The IMF has supported Ukraine by way of a four-year Extended Fund Facility program approved in March 2023, worth around $15.6 billion. This is the first IMF program in history granted to a country involved in an active war. The IMF changed its rules to allow lending to countries facing “exceptionally high uncertainty,” its March 2023 press release says.
Bloomberg previously wrote the EU is considering a new plan to provide loans to Ukraine using the cash balance from frozen Russian assets, referred to as “reparation loans.”
Previously, Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko told Ukraine’s lawmakers that for 2026, the identified need for external financing currently amounts to $18.1 billion, based on an estimated average US dollar annual exchange rate of Hr. 45.7, Interfax-Ukraine reported.
The estimate differs from the NBU’s figure of an “unidentified” gap of $12.7 billion for Ukraine’s needs in 2026. Ukraine’s central bank does not publish its forecast on the exchange rate.
Ukraine spends around 60% of its budget on the war effort against Russia and depends heavily on Western allies to cover pensions, public sector wages, and humanitarian programs.
In the first quarter of 2025, the country spent $20.8 billion – roughly 75% of its total state budget – on defense against Russia, the Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) Institute estimated.