The war of aggression against Ukraine has become very expensive for Russia, according to the information published by the country’s Ministry of Finance.
Russia spent two trillion rubles, or just under 24 billion euros, on defense in January and February of this year alone. The increase was 282 percent compared to the same time last year, reports the Reuters news agency.
According to Reuters, the information can be found on the Russian Ministry of Finance’s budget website.
In January-February last year, Russia spent 525.4 billion rubles, or just under 6 billion euros, on “national defense”. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched what it called a “special military operation” war of aggression against Ukraine.
The Russian Ministry of Finance stopped publishing individual months’ budget implementation data in May of last year. Now the ministry has added information on last year’s and the beginning of this year’s expenses to the website.
According to new data, Russia’s defense spending was 1.18 trillion rubles, or just under 13.5 billion euros, in January of this year and 822.4 billion rubles (about 9.4 billion euros) in February.
Throughout this year, Russia plans to spend 4.98 trillion rubles, or just under 57 billion euros, on defense. According to Reuters’ calculations, Russia already spent more than 40 percent of its planned defense budget for this year in January-February.
According to data published last week, Russia’s budget deficit was around 38.8 billion euros in January-April this year. At the same time last year, a surplus of around 13.7 billion euros was generated. The reason for the shortfall is that Russia’s income from energy trade has decreased and government spending has increased.
Growing arms production and huge government spending sustain Russian industry and help soften the impact of economic sanctions imposed by Western countries.
In January-February 2023, Russia’s defense expenditures made up 36.2 percent of the total budget expenditures. According to Reuters, the amount is almost twice as much as social policy spending.
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