Moscow doubles its war spending - Reuters

According to Ukrinform, Reuters reported this.

"Russia has doubled its 2023 defense spending target to more than $100 billion - a third of all public expenditure," the report said.

These figures show Russia's spending on its war at a time when data on budget expenditures by sector are no longer published.

In the first half of 2023 alone, Moscow spent 12%, or 600 billion rubles, more on defense than the 4.98 trillion rubles ($54 billion) envisaged for 2023.

Defense spending in the first half of 2023 amounted to 5.59 trillion rubles. This is 37.3% (vs 17.1% planned) of the total budget expenditures for the half-year (14.97 trillion rubles) and 19.2% of the total annual budget.

The rising cost of the war is contributing to Russia's modest economic recovery this year, thanks to an increase in industrial production, but has already pushed the budget finances into a deficit of about $28 billion, a figure exacerbated by falling export earnings.

Almost all (97.1%) of the growth in Russian budget expenditures was on weapons production, the army, and related items. Russia has not seen such a high share of military spending in over a decade.

As Ukrinform reported, according to British intelligence, the Russian military spending budget this year amounted to about 6.6 trillion rubles ($85.8 billion).