The Minister of Defense of Great Britain Ben Wallace called for an increase of the military budget of the kingdom by 20% over the next two years, writes The Times referring to a source.

According to the newspaper, Wallace asked Treasury Secretary Jeremy Hunt to increase spending on the defense sector by 8 billion pounds ($9.6 billion) to 11 billion pounds ($13.2 billion). He cited the military conflict in Ukraine and high inflation in the country. Now the defense budget of Great Britain is 48.6 billion pounds ($58.5 billion) a year.

According to the newspaper's sources, the Finance Ministry refused to increase defense spending because of other priority areas, including healthcare.

However, sources in the defense sector said that additional funds are needed not to buy new equipment but to support the current state of the UK Armed Forces.