In a video address in the evening, he also said that social obligations such as pensions should be covered in full. Uncritical spending should be reduced as much as possible, he added.
Mr Zelenskiy said he had met Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko and other officials earlier in the day.
“It is clear that this will be the budget of a country at war,” he said. “More than a trillion hryvnia next year will be spent on the security and defense sector. This will be the number one priority.”
The government will present plans to cut spending on state enterprises, civil servants and institutions deemed non-essential, he said.
A special reconstruction fund will be set up and will be partly fed by the proceeds of the confiscation of Russian assets, he said, taking up an idea that kyiv had already mentioned before.
Ukraine has estimated that the costs of the war, combined with falling tax revenues, have left a fiscal deficit of $5 billion per month – or 2.5% of pre-war GDP. Economists calculate that this pushes the annual deficit to 25% of GDP, compared to just 3.5% before the conflict.
($1 = 36.5000 hryvnias)