With Russia diverting more and more resources to the Ukraine war, military expenditure will account for almost one third of Russia’s total budget expenditure in 2024, the government’s draft plans show.
Russia also plans to ramp up state borrowing to help fund what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine in the coming years and is counting on a recovery in oil and gas revenues to pre-invasion levels to do so.
Spending under the “national defence” section of Russia’s budget will total 10.78 trillion roubles ($109 billion) next year, or 29.4% of total planned expenditure of 36.66 trillion roubles, according to the finance ministry’s budget documents that outline the government’s fiscal plans for 2024-2026.
In 2021, the year before Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine, defence spending totalled 3.57 trillion roubles, 14.4% of total spending. In 2022, the share of defence spending rose to 17.7%, data on Russia’s electronic budget page showed earlier this year.
Spending figures for 2022 were subsequently removed from the online budget portal. The most up-to-date data for 2023 was published as part of the finance ministry’s 2024-26 budget plans.
The finance ministry has allocated 6.41 trillion roubles to defence in 2023, or 21.2% of total budget expenditure of 30.27 trillion roubles, but Finance Minister Anton Siluanov last week said total spending would be above plan at around 33.5 trillion roubles.
That may mean that defence spending will also be significantly higher than first envisaged.
Moscow doubled its target for defence spending in 2023 to 9.7 trillion roubles, Reuters reported exclusively in August, citing a government document.
“The budget’s structure shows that the main emphasis is on ensuring our victory – the army, defence capability, armed forces, fighters – everything needed for the front, everything needed for victory is in the budget,” Siluanov said last week.
“This is a big strain for the budget, not a small one, but it is our absolute priority.”
(With agency inputs)
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