Russia plans to boost defence spending by a quarter for 2025

NEWS WIRES

30 September 2024 at 5:38 pm·2-min read

Russia will boost its defence budget by nearly 30% next year, surpassing welfare and education spending, a draft budget showed on Monday. The 2025 defence budget is set at 13.5 trillion rubles ($145 billion), up from 10.4 trillion in 2024. Military expenditure has reached Soviet-era levels, as Moscow sustains its Ukraine offensive.

Russia plans to boost its defence budget by almost 30 percent next year as it diverts resources to its Ukraine offensive, spending more on the military than welfare and education combined, a draft budget showed on Monday.

Moscow had already ramped up military spending to levels not seen since the Soviet Union era, pumping out missiles and drones to fire on Ukraine and paying lucrative salaries to its hundreds of thousands of soldiers fighting on the front lines.

The latest planned increase in spending will take Russia's defence budget to 13.5 trillion rubles ($145 billion) in 2025, a document published on the parliamentary website showed, up from 10.4 trillion in 2024.

That figure does not include some other resources being directed to the military campaign, such as spending that Russia labels as "domestic security" and some outlays classified as top secret.

Combined spending on defence and security will account for around 40 percent of Russia's total government spending, seen at 41.5 trillion rubles in 2025.

Before sending the draft budget to the Russian parliament, Moscow trumpeted an increase in investment and social welfare alongside higher military outlays.

The "top priority" of the budget was to be "social support for citizens", Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told a televised government meeting on September 24.

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