European Solidarity MPs condemn the draft State Budget for 2023, in particular, allocating 1.94 billion hryvnias for the United News TV marathon and the Russian-language FREEDOM TV channel.

‘The budget, which has no funds for raising pensions and social benefits, and is completely dependent on external borrowing, provides generous financing of oligarchic channels and Russian-language TV. This is falsification and a crime’, said senior European Solidarity MP Iryna Herashchenko.

‘Such brutal audacity of the authorities could not be imagined. I do not remember any governments so blatantly disrespecting and nullifying the decision of the Parliament of Ukraine’, added MP Ivanna Klympush-Tsyntsadze.

MP Maria Ionova noted, ‘The government solemnly reported that it has prepared the draft State Budget 2023 taking into account the amendments of the MPs, and that the prime minister expects a quick vote in the parliament. Despite the fact that the parliament rejected the idea of allocating an additional 1.4 billion hryvnias for the marathon and FREEDOM, the government pushed this norm to the second reading’.

MP Mykola Kniazhytskyi stated that ‘the funds allocated to oligarchic TV channels are a payment for their loyalty to the authorities’.