Russia’s defense spending soared 282 pct year-over-year to $26 bln in Jan-Feb: Report

Russia spent 2 trillion rubles ($26 billion) on defense in January and February alone, a 282 percent jump on the same period a year ago, data on the budget portal showed, illustrating the spiraling costs for Moscow of its conflict in Ukraine.

Rising military production and huge state spending are keeping Russia’s industry buzzing along, helping soften the economic impact of Western sanctions.

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In the first two months of 2022, 525.4 billion rubles of budgetary funds were spent on “national defense.” Russia launched what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine on February 24 last year.

The data, published on the Federal Treasury’s online budget portal, gives specific insight into military expenditure. The finance ministry stopped publishing individual monthly budget fulfilment data last May, but has now added data for 2022 and the start of this year to the portal.

According to the new data, defense spending amounted to 1.18 trillion rubles in January and 822.4 billion rubles in February.

Russia’s 2023 spending plan envisages 4.98 trillion rubles of expenditure on defense. The data shows the country spent just over 40 percent of its planned annual allocation for the defense sector in Jan-Feb.

Data published last week showed that Russia’s budget deficit stood at 3.4 trillion rubles for January to April, compared with a 1.2-trillion-rouble surplus in 2022, as Moscow has spent heavily and energy revenues have dropped.

Last year, Russia spent 5.51 trillion rubles, or 17.1 percent of its total expenditure on defense, up from 3.57 trillion rubles, or 14.4 percent, in 2021.

In January-February 2023, national defense spending was 36.2 percent of the total budget expenditure, nearly double the amount spent on social policy and almost four times more than spending on the “national economy.”

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