The Russian army’s fall offensive in Donbass, which resulted in a record number of casualties since the beginning of the invasion, has put a heavy burden on the federal budget.
In the third quarter, budget expenditures on “national defense” reached an unprecedented 4.328 trillion rubles, researcher Janis Kluge of the German Institute for International Security Problems calculated on the basis of data from the Electronic Budget.
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 the maintenance of the army and the purchase of weapons in July-September.
Both open and secret spending jumped by dozens of percent, according to Kluge’s calculations: the public part of the budget spent 1.381 trillion rubles on defense (+71% by the second quarter), and 2.947 trillion rubles (+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 (Br1.546 trillion), 15 annual budgets of the national project “Health Care” (Br290 billion) and about 15 annual budgets of large regions, such as Irkutsk (Br270 billion) or Novosibirsk (Br333 billion).
