Russian Budget Expenditures On War Set New Record
15- 9.12.2024, 19:36
- 10,618
2 billion rubles per hour.
The autumn offensive of the Russian army in the Donbas, which resulted in a record number of casualties since the beginning of the invasion, has placed a heavy burden on the Russian federal budget, The The Moscow Times reports.
In the third quarter, budget expenditures under the item “national defense” reached an unprecedented 4.328 trillion rubles, according to calculations based on the “Electronic Budget” data by Janis Kluge, a research fellow at the German Institute for International Security Studies.
Compared to the second quarter, military budget spending increased by 80%, and in annual terms — by 53%. On average, the Russian government spent 329 billion rubles per week, 47 billion rubles per day, or 1.96 billion rubles per hour on maintaining the army and purchasing weapons in July-September.
Both open and secret expenses jumped by tens of percent, according to Kluge's calculations: 1.381 trillion rubles were spent on defense in the public part of the budget (+71% compared to the second quarter), and 2.947 trillion (+131%) in the closed part.
As a result, in one quarter the “war machine” ate up almost three annual budgets of the entire higher education system in the country (1.546 trillion rubles), 15 annual budgets of the national project “Healthcare” and about 15 annual budgets of large regions, such as the Irkutsk region (270 billion rubles) or the Novosibirsk region (333 billion).