A Look At How Russia Is Planning To Spend Its Military Budget

Startfor: How Russia Plans to Allocate Its Military Budget

A critical shift in the Kremlin's budgetary planning is the flat growth in defense spending, which had risen steadily every year since 2011. The Kremlin had planned on expanding defense spending from the 2014 budget to 2015 by 20 percent but only increased spending by 10 percent because of financial constraints. However, defense was the only government sector that did not see its budget cut. The 2016 budget will increase the defense budget by only 0.8 percent, to 3.145 trillion rubles. (This amount is half of 2015's budget of $83.7 billion; however, the ruble plummeted by nearly half during the past year and most of the Russian defense industry's expenses are in rubles, not dollars.)

With the defense budget remaining fairly flat, it will be tricky to decide how to allocate the funds, especially since Russia's defense obligations have expanded during the past year in Ukraine and Syria, along with more military exercises, countermeasures to NATO's expanding presence and the planned 2020 Rearmament Program. Russia was able to handle the financial burden in 2015 but only because these obligations were not constant throughout the year. For example, Russia did not launch its military operations in Syria until September. However, with a similar budget in 2016, something must be cut for Russia to meet all of its obligations.

WNU Editor: I would not be surprised if the Russian government does increase its military budget at the expense of other programs. The Russian public may not want to be engaged in places like Syria .... but for the moment they will give Putin and his government the benefit of the doubt, and they will support his military spending priorities.