Russia spends more than 300 million USD/day on defense

On May 19, the newspaper Moscow Times Citing data from the Russian Finance Ministry, the country spent more than $300 million a day on defense in April. This is more than double the pre-war defense spending.

According to data from the Russian Ministry of Finance, defense spending has increased every month since President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine from the end of February. Accordingly, Russia’s defense spending in February reached 369 billion. rubles ($5.4 billion), which rose to 450 billion rubles ($6.6 billion) in March.

Russia is the largest defense spender with 628 billion rubles ($9.2 billion) in April. This is equivalent to about 21 billion rubles, or $308 million per day.

Russia’s defense spending in April was more than double what it was in the pre-war period, with 233.7 billion rubles ($3.4 billion) spent in January this year. Last April, Russia’s total defense spending was 275 billion rubles.

From January to April this year, Russia allocated 1.681 trillion rubles ($24.6 billion) in military spending. This is more than three times the amount spent on education, more than double the budget spent on health and 10 times the amount spent on environmental management and conservation.

On April 27, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov announced that, according to preliminary estimates, the country’s budget deficit in 2022 will reach 1.6 trillion rubles (more than 20 billion USD).

According to Mr. Siluanov, the last budget deficit index “will depend on the government’s response to the crisis” and support measures for the Russian economy. The reason for this deficit comes from the decision to defer taxes.

Earlier, at the beginning of April, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin forecast that the budget surplus of the Russian Federation in 2022 would be “0.”

Russia launched a special military operation against Ukraine. Since then, Moscow has received a series of strong sanctions from the US and its Western allies. This caused inflation in Russia to increase sharply, while foreign investment flows gradually withdrew from Russia due to many concerns about increased risks.