{"id":1299831,"date":"2025-09-30T18:59:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T15:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/russia-lacks-money-for-war-military-budget-cuts-begin\/"},"modified":"2025-09-30T18:59:22","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T15:59:22","slug":"russia-lacks-money-for-war-military-budget-cuts-begin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/russia-lacks-money-for-war-military-budget-cuts-begin\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia lacks money for war: military budget cuts begin"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2026, Russia plans to reduce defense spending for the first time since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This may indicate that it has reached financial limits beyond which it becomes difficult to maintain a high intensity of war.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The New York Times writes<\/a> about this.<\/p>\n

According to the draft budget of the Russian Federation for 2026:<\/p>\n

Defense spending is being cut from over $163 billion to about $156 billion.<\/p>\n

If we take into account the projected inflation rate of 7%, the real decline looks even more significant.<\/p>\n

Despite the cuts, the Russian military budget is still almost four times larger than in pre-war 2021, and three times higher than Ukraine’s defense spending.<\/p>\n

However, such a burden is already deepening the budget deficit, because Moscow is relying not on mobilization, but on expensive contract workers.<\/p>\n

To partially compensate for the lack of funds, the Russian government plans to increase VAT from 20% to 22%.<\/p>\n

Analysts believe that if the Kremlin wants to increase military funding again, it will either have to raise taxes again or increase domestic debt.<\/p>\n

In any case, this will increase pressure on the economy and could challenge public support for the war, which is already based more on repression than enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

Recall that Russian residents will face a significant increase in utility tariffs – over the next three years, payments may increase by almost 30%<\/a> . The main reason is the deterioration of the infrastructure, which the state will modernize at the expense of the population, as budget funds have been reoriented to finance the war.<\/p>\n

As reported, the Russian Ministry of Finance has proposed increasing the value-added tax rate from the current 20% to 22%<\/a> . The changes are to come into effect on January 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

Also follow \u201cPryamim\u201d<\/strong> on Facebook<\/a> , Twitter<\/a> , Telegram<\/a> , and Instagram.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2026, Russia plans to reduce defense spending for the first time since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This may indicate that it has reached financial limits beyond which it becomes difficult to maintain a high intensity of war. The New York Times writes about this. According to the draft budget of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":1299916,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76871,76872,76874,76892],"class_list":["post-1299831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-2","category-news-feed","category-war","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1299831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1299831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1299916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1299831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prm.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1299831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}