The Crime Desk: Russian President Vladimir Putin has approved a record defense budget. This budget, which is a third of the government’s total spending, was approved almost three years after the Ukraine war.
The 2025 budget, released on Sunday (December 3) local time, allocated about $126 billion (13.5 trillion rubles) for national defense, which is 32.5 percent of government spending.
This year’s defense budget is about $28 billion (three trillion rubles) higher than the previous record high. Lawmakers from both houses of the Russian parliament approved the budget.
Russia has increased its military spending significantly in the past two years. In order to control the surrounding situation, the country’s central bank raised interest rates to 21 percent last October, the highest in decades.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. Moscow is already making progress in key frontline locations. At the same time, it is fighting off a counterattack in the Kursk region.
Ukraine lags behind in both combat material and manpower, despite receiving billions of dollars in aid from Western allies. Recently, the United States and some Western countries allowed Ukraine to use long-range missiles to strike deep into Russia. At the same time, the United States and Germany have sent new military equipment.
