Russia’s defense spending up 282% since beginning of last year - Reuters
According to Reuters, Russia spent $26 billion on defense in January and February 2023, up 282% from the same period a year ago.
This is stated by Censor.NЕТ with reference to RBC-Ukraine.
The data published on the Federal Treasury's online budget portal provides a concrete picture of military spending. The Ministry of Finance stopped publishing separate monthly data on budget execution in May last year, but has now added data for 2022 and the beginning of this year to the portal.
According to the new data, defense spending totaled 1.18 trillion rubles in January and 822.4 billion rubles in February.
Russia's 2023 spending plan calls for 4.98 trillion rubles in defense spending. The data show that in January-February, Russia spent just over 40% of its planned annual allocation on the defense sector.
Data released last week showed that Russia's budget deficit from January to April was 3.4 trillion rubles, compared to a surplus of 1.2 trillion rubles in 2022, as Moscow spends heavily and energy revenues fall.
Last year, Russia spent 5.51 trillion rubles on defense, or 17.1% of total expenditures, compared to 3.57 trillion rubles, or 14.4%, in 2021.
In January-February 2023, national defense expenditures accounted for 36.2% of total budget expenditures, which is almost twice as much as social policy expenditures and almost four times as much as "national economy" expenditures.
