With tears in her eyes, she grabbed my hand. "We were collecting everything for them," recalls 73-year-old Anna. Her nephew has been fighting on the front lines since 2014, when the country's army was under-equipped.

"It's so terrible to remember them standing there without even medical kits, syringes, pills, or even canned food. We were taking everything we had from our houses to help them." I asked her if she was happy with her tax money going to support a war with no end in sight.

"It's top priority," she confirms. "We need to spend money for weaponry to help maintain our army. We need to spend a lot."

Sustaining Ukraine's costly conflict

The cost of Ukraine's defense has increased. Since 2014, when fighting broke out between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists following Moscow's annexation of Crimea, Kyiv has doubled the country's military budget.

In 2020, it reached an all-time high of roughly $6 billion - or around 4 percent of the country's GDP. Vyacheslav Tseluyko, a security expert and associate professor at the Kharkiv National University, said Kyiv had to spend a significant part of its budget to maintain its forces.

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"Ukraine's army is growing and funds are needed for rearmament as the majority of its weapons come from the Soviet era," she said. "All this costs a significant amount of Ukrainian's not so big budget."

In addition to new weaponry, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky recently announced a substantial military aid package, including the addition of 100,000 soldiers over the next three years and improved contract conditions.

War hits Ukraine economy

Yet Kyiv's budget is strained. Not only is the eight-year-long war in the east eating up federal budgets, it is also challenging the economy.

According to the World Bank, Ukraine's GDP fell 18 percent between 2013 and 2020.

Since Russia began building up troops along Ukraine's borders late last year, the local currency, the hryvnia, has dropped in value and capital coming into the country has largely been suspended.

Foreign investors have frozen funding and unloaded Ukrainian bonds, sending their interest rates soaring.

"Ukraine can't afford to spend much money on buying weapons," says Tseluyko. 

Foreign arms

However, she adds that recent shipments of modern weaponry from the U.S. and UK have "significantly increased the number of modern arms in Ukrainian's army."

The U.S. has promised Kyiv $200 million of "lethal aid" while other NATO countries have also been sending military equipment to the country.

Recently, President Vladimir Zelensky has also asked the U.S. for a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to help protect the country's second largest city, Kharkiv.

With the Russian border only 30 kilometers north of the strategic city, Zelensky fears it could be a target for Russian forces should they decide on an assault.

Kharkiv has a big industrial center and boasts the biggest railway hub in Eastern Ukraine, a strategic site for Russia if it were to launch an advance from the east.

The territory around Kharkiv also has gas fields, fertile farmland and a concentration of armed forces that "need to be secured from airstrikes," says Tseluyko.

Russia developing more weaponry

She adds that Russia is actively developing its operational tactical-missile forces by training with the Iskander mobile short-range ballistic missile system and sea-launched Kalibr missile systems.

"To defend ourselves from these precision weapons, Ukraine needs an effective anti-missile defense system," says Tseluyko.

However, Moscow says the delivery of the THAAD system would "be another step towards destabilization."

And with Russia capable of spending six times more on its military than Ukraine, with a GDP ten times its size, President Zelensky will need to weigh the true cost of a military build-up.