Putin's new budget has increased Russian defense spending to an astonishing new height

Russian President Vladimir Putin has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on his invasion of Ukraine and the Kremlin's latest budget shows the costs of the conflict have forced Moscow to increase its defense spending to all-new heights.

On December 1st, Putin approved Russia’s 2025 budget, a measure that will see a major increase in defense spending to meet the growing needs of Moscow’s military forces amid the country’s invasion of Ukraine. 

According to several reports, the 2025 Russian defense budget will make up 32.5% of the country’s total budget for the year. The Associated Press reported that the Kremlin’s defense spending is up from the 28.3% Russia allocated in 2024.  

Figures from a Russian government website quoted by the Associated Press reported that Russia has allocated 13.5 trillion rubles (or roughly $145 billion dollars) for defense spending throughout 2025. 

Lawmakers in Russia’s State Duma and Federal Council approved the country’s 2025 budget in late November. The Moscow Times reported that the budget represented a “historically high 6.31% of Russia’s projected GDP for next year.”

“Combined spending on defense and national security will exceed allocations for education, healthcare, social programs, and economic development in 2025,” the Moscow Times continued, adding defense spending was projected to decline in 2026 and 2027.

The allocation of such a large amount of funding for defense spending in 2025 suggests that Russia will continue to remain on the warpath well into the year despite the altered geopolitical climate that resulted from Donald Trump’s election to the U.S. presidency.  

The budget increase is more than likely due to the growing costs of Russia’s conflict in Ukraine, which surpassed its 1,000 days of war on November 19th and has cost Moscow hundreds of thousands of casualties and billions in equipment losses. 

“Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 2022 is Europe’s biggest conflict since World War II and has drained the resources of both sides,” the Associated Press reported. However, the true cost of the conflict for Russia is currently unknown. 

In February 2024, the Pentagon tried to calculate the total cost of the war for Russia up to that point in the conflict. It noted that military operations alone had tallied to upwards of $21 billion dollars over two years of war according to Reuters. 

The Pentagon report estimated that the cost of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine would cost Moscow $1.3 trillion dollars in anticipated economic growth through 2026. However, the absolute total cost of the war may not be known until long after the conflict is over. 

On December 8th, U.S. Defense Secretary Llyod Austin revealed Moscow had paid a "staggering price or Putin's folly" according to remarks that he made while announcing a new military aid package for Ukraine at the Regan National Defense Forum.

In addition to suffering at least 700,000 casualties in the war since Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Austin noted that Russia had also "squandered more than $200 billion."

On November 28th, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed Ukraine’s latest budget into law. However, in terms of defense spending, it paled in comparison to what Moscow could bring to bear against its neighbor. 

Ukraine will spend 2.2 trillion hryvnias ($53 billion) on its defense, which is 26.3% of the country’s total GDP according to The Kyiv Independent. 

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