Sienkevych explained to Forbes that defense spending is not limited to TDF, and Mykolaiv helped the military by almost ₴700 million

The publication Forbes Ukraine analyzed the financing of the military included in the local budgets, where it is said that the cities directed more funds to the improvement than to the assistance of the Armed Forces. In particular, the infographic shows that Mykolaiv sent only 29 million hryvnias to the defense forces.

Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych responded to the publication on Facebook, noting that the total amount of the city's assistance is 691 million hryvnias.

In the Forbes article, it is explained that they only counted expenses under the articles «Measures and works on territorial defense» and «Other measures of public order and security», not taking into account other allocations of funds.

According to their calculations, the Mykolaiv city government spent 627 million hryvnias on landscaping, and only 29 million hryvnias on defense, indicating that 2.6 billion hryvnias came to the city budget from the personal income tax of the military in 2023.

In response to this, Oleksandr Sienkevych published a schedule of the city council with the financing of the military, on which almost 700 million hryvnias were spent. The mayor pointed out that the publication took into account only individual items related to the TDF, and not the costs of the Defense Forces as a whole.

— At the beginning of the war, we bought and handed over equipment to the military through the executive committee, but later, in order to make this work, on the one hand, more efficient and faster, and on the other hand, safe in terms of the possible disclosure of purchase items, we began to transfer subventions to military units. All control over the use of these funds is carried out by law enforcement agencies, — the mayor said.

As you know, 17 new cars were purchased and transferred to the Armed Forces with city funds, another 89 units of equipment were transferred to parts from utility companies.

We remind that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, 597 million hryvnias have been allocated from the budget of Mykolaiv for the needs of the Armed Forces, and another 80 million hryvnias have been transferred to equipment.

Also, ₴400 million was allocated from the Mykolaiv budget for the military, of which 200 million hryvnias will be used to purchase housing for military personnel serving in parts of the Mykolaiv garrison.

In addition, the municipal enterprise Mykolaiv Parks planned to purchase 511 tree saplings and 16 thousand 420 bushes for 7 million 726 thousand 475 hryvnias.

However, the mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, suggested that 7 million hryvnias from the trees planned for planting should be used for the purchase of pickup trucks for the military.