“Recently, there were reports in the mass media that this year the public debt of Ukraine will exceed or has already exceeded 100% of GDP. UA.News decided to find out what economic experts think about this and whether such a situation threatens a catastrophe for the state. Economic expert Oleksiy Kush assesses the indicators of Ukraine’s public debt in a negative context. He believes that this is a serious problem for”, — write on: ua.news
Recently, there were reports in the mass media that this year the public debt of Ukraine will exceed or has already exceeded 100% of GDP. UA.News decided to find out what economic experts think about this and whether such a situation threatens a catastrophe for the state.
Economic expert Oleksiy Kush assesses the indicators of Ukraine’s public debt in a negative context. He believes that this is a serious problem for the Ukrainian economy.
“The debt rubicon has been crossed. According to the Ministry of Finance, as of August 31, 2025, the state and state-guaranteed debt of Ukraine amounted to UAH 7,945.72 billion, or $192.58 billion, namely: state and state-guaranteed foreign debt — UAH 5,984.3 billion (75.31% of the total amount of state and state-guaranteed debt), or $145.04 billion, state and state-guaranteed domestic debt — UAH 1,961.42 billion (24.69%), or $47.54 billion. According to analysts’ forecasts, the GDP of Ukraine in 2025 may amount to approximately $200 billion.
But the debt level will increase by the end of December. So, we can actually officially say that the state debt mark of 100% of GDP has been exceeded. Not only the size of the debt is important, the number one problem is the cost of servicing it, which is about 15%. These will be weights on the legs of the Ukrainian economy after the war, which will not allow quick debt repayment and debt servicing. And if there are concessions during the war, it will be a really critical indicator in the future. Ukraine will have to carry out real restructuring and partial debt write-off”, – Oleksiy Kush is confident.
But economist Oleg Pendzyn assesses the situation not so bleakly. He believes that today is not about any catastrophe.
“Look, Japan’s public debt is 250% of GDP. Do any of the Japanese say it’s a disaster? But hardly. In the USA – 130% of GDP. Is it a disaster? No. It is not about whether it is a disaster or not, what it should be and so on. It is about the cost of servicing the debt. When we talk about the cost of its maintenance, this is a defining thing that should be paid attention to and analyzed. We had 60% before the full-scale invasion began. What grew later grew under very favorable conditions for Ukraine. That is, there are very low rates and generally good conditions. So I don’t see it as a problem. And this is not a catastrophe for today. We have a war, we are fighting, this is the key problem. Debt burden is the only way today to meet defense needs. You either live or you don’t, that’s all.” Oleg Pendzyn explained to UA.News.
We used to wrote that the national debt of Ukraine has exceeded 7 trillion hryvnias.
