Russia plans to significantly increase its defence spending in 2024 compared to 2023, the UK Defense Ministry reported.
According to the UK intel, Russia’s proposed budget for 2024 allots around 68% more funds for defence purposes than this year’s budget. This puts defence spending for 2024 at around 6% of GDP.
Meanwhile, “education and healthcare spending will be frozen at the 2023 allocation, which amounts to a real term spending cut due to inflation,” the report added.
The increased military spending is driven in part by the mounting casualty count in Ukraine. “More than half of those soldiers wounded severely enough to require longer term medical care have lost limbs, with one in five requiring upper limb amputations,” said Deputy Labour Minister Alexei Vovchenko on October 17, 2023, according to the UK intelligence service.
The UK intel also tweeted:
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“Consistently heightened military spending will highly likely contribute to inflationary pressures within Russia.
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Continued increases in military spending would force the Russian government to make difficult decisions about how to fund the war, likely increasing financial pressures on Russian businesses.
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However, any substantial future reduction in military expenditure would likely remove an increasingly central driver of Russian economic activity in the face of sanctions.”
Recently Bloomberg also reported that Russia plans “a massive increase in defense spending next year as President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine continues to remake its economy and alter funding priorities.”
As per Bloomberg, defence spending would rise to 10.8 trillion rubles ($112 billion) in 2024 from 6.4 trillion rubles in the 2023 year. The forecast defence budget would be triple the 3.6 trillion rubles allocated in 2021, the last year before Putin began the February 2022 invasion.
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