Russia defence budget: Russia has increased the defence budget by 23 per cent in 2025. As per the draft state budget documents published on Monday, national defence will increase by 23 per cent in 2025 to 13.5 trillion roubles ($145.32 billion) from 10.8 trillion roubles in 2024.
Defense spending is expected to constitute 32 per cent of the total budget expenditure in 2025, which is projected to be 41.5 trillion roubles.
Earlier, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov had said that the needs of what Moscow refers to as its "special military operation" in Ukraine and support for the military would remain the budget priority.
However, defence spending is expected to drop to 12.8 trillion roubles in 2026. About 10 per cent of total defence spending will go to military personnel payments.
Russia-Ukraine war
The two-and-half-year-old Ukraine war has triggered the gravest confrontation between Russia and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis - which is considered to be the time when the two Cold War superpowers came closest to intentional nuclear war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been urging Kyiv's allies for months to let Ukraine fire Western missiles including long-range U.S. ATACMS and British Storm Shadows deep into Russia to limit Moscow's ability to launch attacks.
With Ukraine losing key towns to gradually advancing Russian forces in the country's east, the war is entering what Russian officials say is the most dangerous phase to date. Russia controls just under one-fifth of Ukrainian territory and has warned the West of the risks of a global war. Putin, who casts the West as a decadent aggressor, and U.S. President Joe Biden, who casts Russia as a corrupt autocracy and Putin as a killer, have both warned that a direct Russia-NATO confrontation could escalate into World War Three.
Russia is the world's largest nuclear power. Together, Russia and the U.S. control 88 per cent of the world's nuclear warheads.
(With Reuters input)
