The debt more than doubled from $97.95 billion at the end of 2021, before the escalation of Kyiv’s conflict with Russia in February 2022, according to the report. In recent months, Kyiv has been struggling to plug multi-billion-dollar holes in its budget while pleading with its reluctant backers in the European Union for more assistance, officials said. The updated debt figure was published as Ukrainian officials continued negotiations over a €90 billion ($1 trillion) loan package that EU leaders approved in December 2025 [1].
The hryvnia lost nearly 90% of its value against the U.S. dollar over the same period, partly explaining the national-currency increase, according to the ministry data. Ukraine's 2021 GDP was around $200 billion, according to the report, compared with the current debt principal of almost $107 billion.
The scale of the expansion is not solely a wartime phenomenon. The Institute of International Finance has separately estimated total global debt at $315 trillion, describing the current wave as the largest and fastest rise since World War II [2].
Foreign governments and international institutions now account for 66.4% of Ukraine’s debt portfolio, much of it on p...