Russia will spend almost third of its budget on "defense" next year

The terrorist state of russia will allocate almost a third of the federal budget to the financing of "defense" in 2024 against the background of moscow's "special operation" in Ukraine, and taking into account the costs of security forces, the total costs of the army, police and special services will take up 39% of the total budget costs, it follows from the materials for the draft budget for 2024-2026 submitted to the country's parliament - the Duma.

According to the Ministry of Finance of the russian federation, spending on the "National Defense" section next year will reach RUB 10.78 trillion, or 29.4% of the RUB 36.66 trillion that the government plans to spend next year.

Compared to 2021, before the start of the war in Ukraine, when defense spending was RUB 3.57 trillion, nominal spending on the army and state defense orders will triple in 2024, and double as a percentage of total spending.

In 2022, when russia launched the "special operation", the government spent RUB 5.51 trillion on defense, or 17.7% of total spending for the year, according to data on the single portal Electronic Budget, which was later deleted and classified.

Thus, by 2022, military spending in 2024 will almost double. In the published Main directions of the budget policy of the Ministry of Finance of the russian federation, data on the structure of expenditures for 2022 are not given - 2021 is followed by 2023.

According to the Ministry of Finance, defense spending in 2023 will amount to RUB 6.41 trillion, or 21.2% of the total budget expenditures of RUB 30.27 trillion.

In the current law on the budget for this year, defense spending was laid down in the amount of RUB 4.98 trillion, that is, the growth compared to the plan is already 28.6%, but the Minister of Finance of the russian federation, Anton Siluanov, announced on Thursday that the expenditures of the federal budget this year will amount to about RUB 33.5 trillion, which may indicate that spending on the army already increased much more in 2023.

According to government documents previously reported by Reuters, defense-related spending in russia in the first half of the year alone amounted to RUB 5.59 trillion, and the total planned defense spending for 2023 is RUB 9.7 trillion.

The day before, Siluanov refused to answer a question about the amount of defense spending in 2023, based on the total amount of spending of more than RUB 33 trillion, but called spending on the army the main priority of the government.

In turn, the press secretary of the president of the russian federation Dmitry Peskov said that the increase in defense spending is "absolutely necessary" because russia lives "in a state of hybrid war."

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