The Russian government is preparing for a record increase in the defense-industrial complex spendings since the early 2010s, hoping to replenish the large stockpiles of weapons it has already lost in the war in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu actually spoke about this in unison at a meeting of the Board of the Ministry of Defense.
The Russian authorities plan that Russian budget spending on state defense orders will increase by almost 1.5 times in 2023. This will make it possible to provide formations and permanent combat readiness units with weapons and equipment at the level of 97%. Thus, the Russian leadership has already postponed the supply of the most popular types of weapons from 2024-2025 to 2023.
In general, the federal budget will spend 4.2 trillion rubles on national defense next year. Compared to the initial plan, spendings will increase by a third, or 1.2 trillion rubles, and in 2024, these costs will increase by 19 %, up to 5 trillion rubles.
Thus, the Russian authorities will spend almost 10 trillion rubles on the “military machine” in two years, which is 7 times more than the annual expenditure of the federal treasury on health care (1.4 trillion rubles) and almost 1.5 thousand times higher for the amount allocated for the development of own production of medicines (6.7 billion rubles in 2022).
Russia also plans to gradually increase the age of conscription for urgent military service to 21, and the age limit for service to 30. In addition, the number of the Russian army is expected to increase to 1.5 million people, including 695 thousand contractors. Now, the number of the Russian army determined for 2023 is 1,150,626 people.
The Russian authorities plan to mobilize their loyal subjects to implement any will of the monarch, represented by Putin for the past ten years. He can give millions of his citizens’ lives on the battlefield to satisfy his imperialist goals. Most likely, this will not bring him the desired result. Moscow will no longer be able to kill the Ukrainians with “meat”, who will have even more modern Western weapons, in particular HIMARS, and other technological advantages.
However, Putin is not going to give up his maximalist goals, which actually means the destruction of Ukraine as it stands.
The Kremlin plans to create a large army that will create a new and serious threat to NATO in case of positive for Moscow outcome of the war in Ukraine. Putin is already seriously changing the strategic distribution of Russia’s resources in the long term. Therefore, the Kremlin’s threat must be stopped by the timely delivery of Western weapons to Ukraine.