RUSSIA PLANNING ALMOST 10 TRILLION RUBLES IN DEFENSE EXPENDITURES IN UPCOMING THREE YEARS
MOSCOW -- The Russian government will spend close to 10 trillion rubles ($131 billion) on defense from 2021 to 2023.
According to draft budget documentation, the Russian government plans to allocate 9.4 trillion rubles to defense-related matters in the next three years. RUB3.1 trillion will be spent on defense in 2021, followed by RUB3.2 trillion in 2022 and RUB3.1 trillion in 2023. The planned expenditures for 2021 and 2023 are slight cuts from previous budget government forecasts, while the 2022 plan is slightly higher.
At the current dollar exchange rate, the 2021 budget will be about $40.6 billion. However, as Russia spends primarily within its own domestic market to fill its defense requirements -- importing mostly only components, rather than finished platforms -- the effect of its spending is much greater than the absolute dollar value suggests.
The budget figures confirm a trend towards stagnation in the Russian defense budget, which previously saw dramatic increases in line with major modernization pushes over the last few years. The collapse of energy prices beginning in 2014 has put downward pressure on the defense budget.
Russian media highlighted the development of the Black Sea Fleet as a key priority for the upcoming period. Russia's Black Sea Fleet is based out of Sevastopol on the Crimean peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 after a contested independence referendum. The Russian Navy has worked to beef up the Black Sea Fleet in recent years to enjoy superiority over other littoral states, and a number of the fleet's ships have also rotated into the Navy's detachment in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, where competing claims to gas rights have caused a spike in tension between a number of countries and Turkey.
Strategically, relations with the West, in particular, are the key security factor in the defense budget. In comments on September 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 as the impetus for the creation of a range of new Russian nuclear weapons systems, particularly hypersonic technology which the Kremlin expects will be able to penetrate any enemy air-defense network.
Russian officials have been pessimistic on reaching new agreements with the U.S. on mutual arms control. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov commented on Monday that the "chances of extending the New START [treaty] are minuscule." The START series of treaties between the U.S. and Russia have capped the number of nuclear warheads and delivery systems that the parties may have in active service. New START is set to expire in 2021, but to date Moscow and Washington have not made much progress in reaching a deal to extend the restrictions. The U.S. has pushed for the inclusion of China in the treaties as a condition of extending them.
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