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Russia is spending record amounts on the Ukraine war

From the AP:

Russian President Vladimir Putin approved budget plans, raising 2025 military spending to record levels as Moscow seeks to prevail in the war in Ukraine. Around 32.5% of the budget posted on a government website Sunday has been allocated for national defense, amounting to over $145 billion.

This is a little over 7% of GDP. The US outspends Russia 6-to-1, but this still amounts to only 3% of GDP:

Can Russia sustain this level of spending? We did it during the Korean and Vietnam wars, so I suppose Russia can do it for the Ukraine war. But it still must be a helluva strain.

37 thoughts on “Russia is spending record amounts on the Ukraine war

  1. Joel

    The difference is that the US GDP is based on a broad range of goods and services. Russia is now basically a gas station with an army.

  2. iamr4man

    It just never occurred to me that Russia could sustain the number of combat casualties it has in Ukraine without political upheaval. So it wouldn’t surprise me if it sustains an economic hit like this. Besides, the war will end soon, possibly with the U.S. withdrawing aid to Ukraine and giving it to Putin.

    1. J. Frank Parnell

      The Germans in WWII kept expecting Russia to collapse, but it never did. Still, it's expensive for a war that was supposed to last 30 days. Meanwhile from Syria to central Asia the natives are getting restless.

      1. tango

        True, but Russia also fell apart pretty thoroughly in WW1... I think that it is hard for us without inside intelligence to figure out what is going to happen in terms of Russian stability and it's desire and ability to sustain the war. And even those WITH inside information probably don't know for sure!

      2. TheMelancholyDonkey

        Entirely different situation. During WWII, the Germans made it absolutely clear to everyone in the Soviet Union that surrender was pointless, since the Germans planned to wipe them out regardless. This was reinforced by how barbarically they treated Slavic peoples during WWI. (Look up an organization called Ober Ost.)

    2. Andrew

      Most of the soldiers injured or dying are from the outlying poorer regions to the east. They are being very careful by not taking too many people from the western areas of the country around Moscow or St. Petersburg.

  3. rick_jones

    I suppose Russia can do it for the Ukraine war. But it still must be a helluva strain.

    So long as it can still find buyers for its oils and gas it will probably continue along.
    So, which countries are the biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas these days?

    1. ProgressOne

      China and India buy the most fossil fuels from Russia. China is ultra-authoritarian and India is semi-authoritarian. The EU and Turkey are next. Turkey is semi-authoritarian too. In the EU, the biggest user is Hungary, also semi-authoritarian. As with most problems in the world, it’s the authoritarian and semi-authoritarian regimes driving major problems.

      Germany imported about half their gas from Russian before the war, and now imports zero. But countries like Italy still buy a lot of Russian pipeline gas. However, pipeline NG exports are now a pretty small part of Russia’s fossil fuel exports.

  4. painedumonde

    It cannot. Never could. It was demonstrated at the outset. They proceeded on hubris, faulty intelligence, and bad strategy. This is all hind sight as common knowledge gave the world a picture of the Russians that positively glowed.

    How on earth can the world's "second most powerful" air force still not have air superiority? How is it that advanced tanks can be countered by IFV's? How can an advanced Navy be mauled and sent to mothballs? How is it that an advanced military uses zerg tactics instead of combined arms? How is it that NK's are fighting? We can go on, but the fact of the matter is it was all a mirage, a bluff. As kids, young men and women, grandmas and grandpas get to suffer the effects.

  5. D_Ohrk_E1

    Can Russia sustain this level of spending? We did it during the Korean and Vietnam wars, so I suppose Russia can do it for the Ukraine war.

    You sure about that?

    Russia's unemployment rate is 2.3% and dropping. Eventually, Russia will run out of bodies to put to work (because they've diverted most of them to the front lines) and they'll have to import laborers. Up against economic sanctions, no country except North Korea will openly allow their citizens to work in Russian military factories. And, until they run out of bodies, wages are going to keep skyrocketing to keep up with record inflation.

    As it was immediately after the 2014 Crimean invasion, Russian GDP dropped after the Feb 2022 invasion. With a shrinking economy and soaring inflation, Russia has to increase its % of GDP spending on the military just to keep up. And they're obviously not keeping up domestically, given how much stuff they're taking in from NK and Iran.

    Which brings us to the extremely weak Ruble, making it expensive for Russia to import goods it cannot produce on its own or doesn't have the capacity to keep up with demand because of a lack of labor.

    Also, aren't they going to also have to spend additional, unanticipated resources on trying to keep Assad in power?

    Seems to me, their military spending is far behind what it needs to spend to maintain the war and what they're hoping for is Western countries to get tired of funding the war.

  6. KJK

    Putin just got his most valuable asset reelected, so the war is finally going their way. It seems that there is no way for Ukraine to force Russian forces out of their country, in what is looking like a WWI style static front warfare (with drones, hypersonic missiles, and glide bombs) and Russia has far more people and materials to throw into that meat grinder.

    Trump will force a "Neville Chamberlain" type agreement on them, and we can wait a few years until the full takeover of Ukraine is complete.

    1. lawnorder

      The countries of the EU can support Ukraine without American help. When the war started, all of the western countries were forced to the realization that they were prepared for an air war but had allowed their defence production capabilities with respect to ground war to atrophy. The result was that for a number of important munitions, especially artillery ammunition, aid to Ukraine was skimpy because the western countries had neither large inventories nor large production capability. That has been addressed since the war started and now munitions production is climbing rapidly in several European countries.

      Given the munitions, money is not really an issue. The EU's GDP is bigger than the US's and more than ten times Russia's.

      1. FrankM

        One question: Would Trump go so far as to put pressure on the EU to limit its aid to Ukraine? Sounds ridiculous, but then, I wouldn't put anything past Trump. What levers would he have? Tariffs, of course! But possibly others. He could also try to reverse the limits on Putin's ability to tap foreign assets.

        But then, I guess we have nothing to worry about, since by January 21 the war will be over.

        1. lawnorder

          In terms of GDP, the EU is bigger than the US. If Trump tries to put pressure on the EU, they can tell him to go fuck himself and if he starts economic warfare the US will lose.

          1. kennethalmquist

            Both sides will lose, but the United States is the side that will most likely fold. Most Americans don’t share Trump’s admiration of Putin. In July, support for keeping strict economic sanctions on Russia polled 69% approve / 14% disapprove / 17% not sure. The numbers among Republicans were not much different: 66%/19%/15%.

            There is less support for continuing to send military equipment and weapons to Ukraine, especially among Republicans. The numbers are 54%/31%/14% overall and 42%/45%/12% for Republicans. But I suspect that is driven by “America first” rhetoric convincing people that the United States should not be spending money to help Ukraine, and doesn’t indicate an objection to weapons flowing to Ukraine as long as someone else is paying the bill.

            Source for polling numbers: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/07/29/war-in-ukraine-wide-partisan-differences-on-u-s-responsibility-and-support/

  7. ProgressOne

    Putin could soon deplete Russia’s National Wealth Fund, which has helped finance the war and prop up the economy. With inflation at 7.4% and interest rates at 21% and rising, Putin has backed Russia’s economy into a corner. Russia could soon face an economic crisis, further undermining its ability to produce sufficient military equipment and to recruit and pay hundreds of thousands of new soldiers.

    But Trump may attempt to impose an unjust ceasefire on Ukraine, which would bail out Putin economically and also enable him to take the needed time to rebuild his military. We'll see.

    1. KenSchulz

      Not a lucky thing; nobody outside of Russia wants rubles. They must have spent down most or all foreign reserves, and are of course shut out of the dollar/sovereign/euro financial systems. Besides fossil fuels, they used to export weapons, now they are importing weapons and munitions. I've seen reports that Russia is trying to barter for its needs.

      1. TheMelancholyDonkey

        It would be nice if, sometime in the next six weeks, Biden were to transfer all of the frozen Russian assets to Ukraine and then pardon everyone involved.

  8. sonofthereturnofaptidude

    Imperialism is getting expensive these days. Russia might be able to get some territory out of a peace treaty, but will it be able to afford the empire it's trying to piece back together?

  9. KenSchulz

    I think it will become increasingly difficult to sustain the financial burden, but the human losses are staggering.
    I have a heterodox opinion that a cease-fire could favor the Ukraine, which is clearly working as fast as it can toward remote and unmanned warfare, to negate Russia's advantage in manpower. This has been spectacularly successful in the naval war, where Russia's Black Sea Fleet has been forced farther and farther east; the most recent attacks have been on missile-firing ships in the Caspian Sea! All by missiles and air- and sea-borne drones, Ukrainian ships and sailors are not at risk.
    Ukraine has been methodically using drones and missiles to attack Russian supply depots and airfields, meanwhile conserving their human resources by giving ground slowly in the Donbas. (The press makes much of the Russian gains in territory in the east, but none of those yet threaten the larger Ukrainian cities.)
    Russia still seems to be relying on human-intensive tactics; some is just the usual 'generals fighting the last war'; some because of the sanctions denying them the technology they would need to fight with less risk to personnel. The sanctions on advanced technology against Russia ought to be continued during a cease-fire, meanwhile allowing Ukraine access and aid.
    If Russia were to attempt to re-start the war after a prolonged cease-fire, they might find themselves faced with as asymmetrical a land war, as the naval war has been; counter-attacked by machines whose human controllers are in protected sites distant from the front; and autonomous weapons as well. No longer in the realm of science fiction.

  10. lawnorder

    Russia can not only sustain this level of effort for a while, they can increase it. They are not yet close to a WWII total war level of effort. On the other hand, the western countries are getting munitions production ramped up; the EU has more than ten times Russia's GDP (Germany alone has three times Russia's GDP) and even without the US will be able to provide Ukraine with enough munitions to bury Russia and pay for it out of pocket change.

    1. KenSchulz

      But in WWII, the USSR fought to expel an invader from its own territory. Putin has been very hesitant to increase conscription for his war of conquest, and when conscripts found themselves at the front in Kursk Oblast, there was open protest against that violation of Russian deployment policy. Recruitment has held up only because military pay was set far above civilian wages. That has forced private-sector employers to increase pay, fueling the inflation surge. In turn, the central bank has raised interest rates to fight inflation, stifling business investment. How long can this last?

      1. TheMelancholyDonkey

        There were protests, but, legally, Putin was, for once, in the right. The prohibition is on Russian conscripts not being sent outside of Russia's borders. Fighting enemies inside those borders is the open purpose of the conscript forces.

  11. Dana Decker

    All those sanctions, and exclusion from SWIFT banking system, were supposed to crater the Russian economy within a year. That didn't happen. Why not?

    1. KenSchulz

      Because Russia is an authoritarian system, in which Putin has levers unavailable in the democracies. The path of the Russian economy is unsustainable, but it can be kept on life support longer than Western economists thought. Putin had probably accumulated larger foreign reserves than we knew when fossil-fuel prices were high, figuring to bankroll his imperialist ambitions.

    2. TheMelancholyDonkey

      Because the impact of sanctions are always overrated. They were supposed to bring Iran back to the negotiating table about its nuclear program. Sixty years later, Cuba continues to stagger along, despite the sanctions they operate under.

      The sanctions against Russia have value. They make it more difficult for them to prosecute the war. They inflict pain. But no one should expect them to totally crater the economy.

      1. KenSchulz

        As always, there are exceptions; the anti-apartheid sanctions against the former Union of South Africa helped bring about democratic reform. It’s a matter of how numerous and powerful are the institutions that are willing to circumvent sanctions.

  12. Jasper_in_Boston

    Can Russia sustain this level of spending?

    Depends to a substantial degree on a guy in Beijing who's really fond of his colorist. I'd guess "yes" because Xi really hates America and wants its proxy to lose. But I hope I'm wrong.

    1. KenSchulz

      But I expect Xi wants China to come out a winner more than he wants the US to be a loser, and those aren’t the same thing.
      The most surprising alignment, to me, is India, where websites of major news organizations (Times of India, Hindustan Times) openly root for an imperialist war of conquest despite India’s recently being on the short end of imperialism. Modi’s government even allowed, for a time, Indian citizens to go to Russia on promises of civilian employment. Finally stopped when it became clear that they were being sent to rear echelons to support the invasion.

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