In 2024, Russia's military budget will exceed social spending for the first time. Bloomberg reports this with reference to the upcoming draft federal budget.
According to the proposals that the Cabinet of Ministers is to discuss on Friday, defense spending in 2024 will increase to 10.8 trillion rubles, while this year for the army allocated 6.4 trillion rubles. In 2021, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, as Bloomberg notes, the Russian defense budget amounted to 3.6 trillion rubles.
In addition, classified expenditure items, according to the agency, will increase 11.1 trillion rubles (in this year 6.5 trillion rubles have been allocated for them). In March, Bloomberg noted that in 2023, almost a third of the Russian federal budget came from classified items.
Expenditures on social policy — including the payment of pensions and other benefits — will also be a record in 2024 and amount to 7.5 trillion rubles (compared to 6.5 billion rubles in 2023). At the same time, for the first time, social spending will be lower than the military budget.
“The dynamics of Russia’s military budget indicate a change in the priorities of the authorities in the context of military operations, which bring heavy financial losses and for which there is no end in sight in the foreseeable future,” writes Bloomberg .
In September, the Faridaily project, citing two federal officials, wrote that the government could not agree on a budget for 2024. Typically, general parameters are formed in June-July, and a budget is prepared according to them in September-October. “There is a trade-off between spending a lot of money and a lot of money,” said one of the interlocutors.
Another source added that both revenues and expenses in 2024 will be higher than provided for in the current budget law. As Faridaily pointed out, the main intrigue of the 2024 budget is spending on the army and security forces in a protracted war, as well as spending on presidential elections.
On the evening of September 22, the government announced that it had approved the draft federal budget for the next three of the year. The transcript from the Cabinet meeting does not mention military spending.
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Updated at 18:45: information has been added that the Cabinet of Ministers has approved the draft budget.