Russia’s war against Ukraine has been going on for three years now and is becoming increasingly expensive for Russian taxpayers. According to researcher Yanis Kluge, daily expenditures on the military and armaments in 2024 amount to 29 billion rubles! This is around 1.2 billion rubles per hour — just insane figures that demonstrate the huge cost of this war for the Russian budget.
Economy in Crisis
In the first half of 2024, the Russian government spent 5.3 trillion rubles on defense needs — 36% more than in the same period last year. To understand the scale, these expenses are equivalent to one and a half annual budgets of the national economy support program. And this is just in six months!
Secret Expenditures
One separate category of expenses is secret defense procurements, which reached 1 trillion rubles in the quarter. There is also a noticeable increase in the public part of the budget: funding for the state defense order increased by 54% compared to the previous year.
Every hour, Russia spends over 1.2 billion rubles on the war with Ukraine – a figure that is simply shocking.
In addition, there is the increase in expenditures for military payments, which have increased by 25% compared to last year.
End of Year Projections: What to Expect?
Initially, the government budgeted 10.8 trillion rubles for military expenditures in 2024, but the actual figures may exceed this plan by a third. By the end of the year, war expenditures could reach 13.3 trillion rubles — that’s approximately 7-8% of the country’s GDP.
