russia’s Military-Industrial Complex Is Repeating the Model of the ussr: Record Spending and Zero Economic Return

Military spending from russia’s federal budget reached another historic high in January–September 2025 – 11.854 trillion rubles. This is by 30 % (2.763 trillion rubles) more than in the same period last year. Compared to 2023, the military budget increased by 95 %, compared to 2022 – by 173 %, and compared to 2021 – by 295 %, i.e. almost fourfold.

The price of the “special military operation” is 1.32 trillion rubles per month, or 43.4 billion per day, or 1.9 billion rubles per hour. The kremlin is already allocating 44 % of all taxes collected by the federal budget and 39 % of its total expenditures to finance the war.

The total cost of the war against Ukraine for russian taxpayers has reached 42.343 trillion rubles, or approximately $542 billion. This is equivalent to 24 annual budgets for the entire russian higher education system, 22 annual spendings on federal healthcare, and nearly 80 annual budgets of large regions such as Sverdlovsk Region (530 billion rubles) or the Krasnodar Territory (600 billion rubles).

Despite the expansion of defense production, the russian military-industrial complex remains structurally similar to the soviet one – it absorbs resources but does not generate economic returns. Current dynamics show that the rf’s military-industrial complex is turning into a classic “black hole” for the budget, displacing civilian investment, limiting technological development, and cementing a model in which military spending generates not growth but chronic fiscal risks.

This imbalance indicates that russia’s economy is not moving according to the logic of industrial development or modernization, but according to the logic of the survival of the military budget, which is increasingly aggressively consuming the resources necessary for long-term economic growth.