OPINION: 40% of Russia's Budget to War — A People Sacrificed

OPINION: 40% of Russia's Budget to War — A People Sacrificed

Introduction: a nation consuming itself

When war takes almost half of everything

Some numbers resist abstraction. 40 percent. That is the share of the Russian federal budget allocated in 2026 to defense and security — or 16.84 trillion rubles, roughly $238 billion. Nearly one ruble in two. And even this official figure is itself an understatement: in operational reality, the military share reached 46 percent in the first quarter — and could climb to 48 percent according to some recent data. Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary General, cited that latter figure at the meeting of Defense Ministers on June 18, 2026.

Behind that percentage lie political choices that commit an entire generation of Russians. Every ruble sent to war is a ruble stolen from the hospital that was not built, the school that was not renovated, the road that was not repaired, the researcher who was not trained. This is not abstract accounting — it is the biography of a people rewritten in wartime, without anyone being asked.

An absolute record in Russia's modern history

To measure the scale of this forced sacrifice, one must compare. In 2021, before the full-scale invasion, defense represented roughly 17 percent of the Russian federal budget. In 2022, that figure rose to 19 percent. In 2023, to 29.5 percent. In 2025, to 41 percent. In 2026, officially 40 percent but realistically 46 to 48 percent. In fewer than five years, Russia has tripled the share of its budget devoted to defense. No country outside a situation of total war has ever undergone such a fiscal transformation in so short a time.

And the curve does not stop there. Bloomberg revealed on June 18, 2026 that the government plans to add 4 to 5 trillion additional rubles to military spending this year — which could push the share of defense and security to 50 percent of the total budget. Half. Of everything. Poured into the war machine. This is a statistic that should be on every front page worldwide. It is not. And that is a collective failure.

What the war steals from ordinary Russians

Healthcare, education, pensions: the sacrificed home front

In 2026, the Russian government has asked its non-military agencies to cut their spending by 10 percent. VAT has been raised to 22 percent — a direct increase in the cost of living for all Russians. Healthcare and education see their envelopes compressed. According to economist Janis Kluge, the monthly cost of the war — roughly 2 trillion rubles — exceeds the annual budget of the entire Russian higher education system (1.7 trillion) and the budget of all Russian regions except Moscow.

This is not an economic abstraction: it is concretely one month of war costing more than all Russian universities for an entire year. And in Russian hospitals, patients report medication shortages. Doctors testify — under cover of anonymity — to aging equipment that 2026 budgets no longer allow to be replaced. Pensions are being eroded by inflation that the Central Bank can no longer contain despite high benchmark rates.

Inflation: the hidden tax on the most vulnerable

The Russian inflation rate remains stubbornly high, fueled by massive military public spending that pumps rubles into the economy without producing consumer goods. The Central Bank has maintained benchmark rates near 14–15 percent in an attempt to contain that inflation — which in turn raises the cost of credit for households and businesses. Russian small businesses, already hit by sanctions and the flight of wealthier consumers abroad, are suffocating under these high rates.

For Russian retirees and fixed-income families, inflation is an invisible tax that gnaws at purchasing power without appearing in any budget law. They did not vote for the war. They cannot protest effectively. They watch their savings melt — while weapons factories run at full capacity a few hundred kilometers from their city.

The brain drain: the invisible cost of sacrifice

300,000 to 700,000 departures since 2022

The number that nobody in the Russian establishment wants to look at squarely: between 300,000 and 700,000 skilled Russians have left the country since the 2022 invasion. Software engineers, doctors, scientists, economists, entrepreneurs. It is an unprecedented hemorrhage of human capital in Russia's modern history. These people have gone to Georgia, Armenia, Turkey, Germany, the United States, Canada. And the vast majority will not return.

This exodus is directly linked to the 40 percent of the budget allocated to war: first, because mobilization drove away hundreds of thousands of men who did not want to fight in a war they did not understand. Then, because underinvestment in education, research and civilian sectors reduces the professional outlook for the most capable. A 40-percent-militarized Russia is not an attractive country for a young researcher or an innovative entrepreneur.

Erasing decades of economic development

The long-term cost of this brain drain is incalculable. Entire generations who would have innovated, built companies, trained students, developed technologies are now beyond Russia's reach. And meanwhile, the public resources that could have retained those talents — well-funded universities, equipped research laboratories, supported startups — are sacrificed in favor of rocket factories and assault battalions.

It is a vicious cycle that Russia cannot break while the war continues: the war drains civilian resources, reduced civilian resources drive away talent, departed talent weakens the future economy, the weakened economy struggles to fund the war — which then demands ever more. 40 percent of military budget today may mean 20 years of economic lag tomorrow.

The spending paradox: an economy feeding on itself

The military boom masks civilian stagnation

Official Russian figures still show nominal economic growth in certain sectors — notably the defense industry and military construction. Moscow uses these numbers to claim the economy is "holding." But this growth is entirely endogenous to the war machine: defense funds defense, which creates jobs in defense, which generates revenues in defense. This is not economic development — it is circular militarism.

The civilian sectors that generate real wealth — agriculture, technology, services, consumption — are stagnating or regressing. Russian GDP per capita is declining in real terms since 2022 once adjusted for inflation. The World Bank and other institutions have cut their Russian growth forecasts for 2026–2028. The military boom is like a steroid: it gives the appearance of vigor while damaging vital organs.

The Siluanov paradox: spending the unsustainable

In a letter obtained by the Financial Times, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov warned in February 2026 that war spending was creating "mounting pressures" on the budget and risking a dangerous widening of the deficit. His solution: cut non-military spending, borrow more, and hope the war ends before the reserves run out.

This is not an economic strategy — it is a race to the edge. Siluanov knows perfectly well what he is doing: he is delaying collapse while knowing that every additional month of war at the current pace worsens the long-term situation. But he does not have the power to tell Putin to stop the war. He can only manage the unsustainable until something gives way. And something will eventually give way.

The cover-up of the disaster: a truth that cannot be told

The Russian media silence on economic reality

In Russia, most independent media have been silenced since 2022. Kommersant, one of the few still partially independent economic outlets, mentions rising prices and fuel tensions — without ever citing Ukrainian drone strikes on refineries as the direct cause. State propaganda maintains the fiction of a solid economy resisting sanctions through national strength.

But ordinary Russians do not live inside propaganda — they go shopping, pay their bills, see their doctors. And they see. Prices are rising. Medications are scarce. Roads and public buildings are less well maintained. The military budget may be hidden in statistics, but its effects on daily life are not. And in a country that has developed a culture of passive resignation, this accumulation of frustrations does not disappear — it waits.

Nine years in prison for 1,500 rubles: the cost of the freedom to speak

In June 2026, a Russian court sentenced a person to nine years in prison for a donation of 1,500 rubles to a political opposition group. To put it in perspective: 1,500 rubles is less than 20 euros. It is also less than one second of Russian military spending — since the war machine swallows 2.7 billion rubles per hour, or 750,000 rubles per second. This disproportion says everything: Russia punishes the slightest dissent with maximum severity while spending astronomical fortunes on a war that its own financiers consider unsustainable.

This context of crushing every freedom of expression is a crucial component of the sacrifice imposed on the Russian people. Not only are their resources confiscated for war — their ability to express disagreement is criminalized. The double sacrifice: money and voice.

Historical comparisons: the USSR in Afghanistan and its lessons

The precedents that frighten

Soviet history offers a troubling mirror. In the 1980s, the USSR devoted between 15 and 25 percent of its GDP to military spending — an unsustainable level that contributed, combined with Gorbachev's reforms, to the regime's collapse in 1991. Russia in 2026 is approaching similar levels: 9 to 12 percent of GDP in quarterly military spending, according to Kluge's projections. Economists at SIPRI and SWP note this troubling resemblance to the Soviet trajectory.

But there are important differences. The USSR of 1980 had a planned economy, a non-convertible currency, and complete isolation from global markets. Russia in 2026 is more integrated into the world economy — even diminished by sanctions — and has more sophisticated internal financial markets. These factors could give it more resilience in the face of budget pressures. But they do not change the fundamental dynamic: an economy that devotes 40 to 48 percent of its budget to the military is no longer oriented toward the well-being of its population.

The Afghan lesson Putin forgot

In 1979, the USSR invaded Afghanistan expecting a quick victory. Ten years and thousands of deaths later, it withdrew, exhausted, discredited, and on the slope that led to its collapse. Vladimir Putin studied that history. He claims to have learned from it. And yet, in 2022, he reproduced exactly the same mistake — an invasion war expected to end in days, which has now lasted more than four years and is consuming resources at a rate that the USSR itself would not have sustained for long. The irony of history is sometimes cruel.

The Russian people did not choose this war. They were not consulted. They were forcibly enrolled, financially and militarily, in an imperial project that is not theirs. And every military budget statistic — 40 percent, 46 percent, 48 percent — is a measure of the scale of the sacrifice being imposed on them. The judgment of history, which does not lie, will be unsparing.

Forced mobilization and its consequences for Russian families

Men torn from their ordinary lives

The partial mobilization decreed in September 2022 and its silent extensions since have torn hundreds of thousands of men from their families, their jobs, their lives. According to estimates from independent Russian organizations, more than 1.2 million Russians have been killed, wounded, captured or reported missing since the start of the full-scale war. Behind every figure is a family waiting, a child growing up without a father, a woman alone carrying the household's responsibilities.

These families receive no clear answers from the Kremlin on the fate of their loved ones. Groups of Russian soldiers' mothers, similar to those that emerged during the Afghanistan war and the first Chechen war, are trying to organize despite repression. Their voices are stifled, their demands ignored. This institutional silence in the face of the suffering of Russian families is a moral betrayal that history will remember.

Prisoners of war and the missing

The fate of Russian prisoners of war held by Ukraine is a subject Moscow approaches with reluctance. Several prisoner exchanges have taken place — Ukraine recently freed 160 Ukrainian soldiers in a recent swap — but thousands of others remain held on both sides. Russian families trying to obtain information about their loved ones hit a wall of bureaucracy and denial. The Russian state treats its own soldiers as disposable resources, not as citizens whose lives have value.

This indifference toward the fate of Russian combatants — once their military usefulness is exhausted — is the hallmark of regimes that instrumentalize national suffering for their own ends. Russian soldiers who return wounded, traumatized, often without psychological support or reintegration assistance, discover that the state that sent them to the front has no plan to welcome them back. That is the true face of the regime behind its speeches about the great Russia.

Russian women facing the war: a silent burden

Mothers, wives and sisters carrying the weight of war

Behind the military and economic statistics of this war lies a human reality too rarely mentioned: the Russian women who carry the weight of absence, anxiety and overload. When men are mobilized, it is women who alone take on raising children, caring for the elderly, handling the household's financial responsibilities. This invisible burden appears in no official economic indicator — but it is eroding the social fabric of Russian society.

Groups of women in Russia have tried, at the risk of their freedom, to organize and demand the return of their loved ones and an end to the war. These courageous voices, quickly repressed by the authorities, are a reminder that opposition to the war exists in Russia — it is simply gagged. Any analogy with the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo or the women of Chechnya is powerless against a regime that has perfected methods of repression.

The propaganda that normalizes death

One of the most disturbing dimensions of this war is the regime's capacity to normalize death in public discourse. The colossal losses — officially minimized, actually devastating — are presented as heroic sacrifice for the homeland. Coffins return to villages, obituaries are published quietly in regional newspapers, but the official narrative maintains the illusion of a clean and victorious war.

This propaganda has its limits: it works less well in the regions where losses are proportionally highest — often the poorest, least educated, most dependent on the state. It is there that resentment grows most silently. Deep Russia — those regions far from Moscow that cameras do not reach — pays a disproportionate price for a war decided in the palaces of the Kremlin. And that moral debt, one day, will have to be settled.

Conclusion: an opinion piece of anger and hope

The anger before the numbers

I claim no neutrality in this piece. The numbers I have written — 40 percent, 46 percent, 48 percent, 53 trillion rubles since 2022, 2.7 billion per hour — are not neutral. They describe a sacrifice imposed by force on an entire people, in the name of an imperial project that its own economic elite considers unsustainable. That is a monumental injustice that the world will look squarely in the eye when this war is over.

Hope in Ukrainian resistance

Ukraine is fighting for its survival. But it is also fighting, indirectly, to free the Russian people from a regime that is sacrificing them. Every sanction that reduces Russian state revenues, every drone that disrupts a refinery, every dollar of Western support that strengthens Ukrainian defenses — all of this accelerates the exhaustion of a system that can only survive by continuing to consume its own people. When that spiral stops, it will also be — perhaps — the beginning of freedom for Russia.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

My assumed positioning

I am Maxime Marquette, an engaged columnist. This piece is not a neutral article — it is an informed opinion text. I am resolutely pro-Ukraine, opposed to wars of aggression, and I consider the Russian people to be a victim — not merely a co-conspirator — of the Putin regime. I distinguish the regime from the people, even when I acknowledge that distinction is sometimes uncomfortable. My biases are declared.

Method and sources

All figures cited in this piece are drawn from verifiable sources: analyses by Janis Kluge (SWP), reports from the ISW, data from Bloomberg, SIPRI, Le Grand Continent and Euromaidan Press. Projections on the Russian economy are estimates based on current trends — they may prove inaccurate if major political or economic events intervene. Historical comparisons with the USSR are analogies, not certainties.

Sources

Primary sources

Euromaidan Press — Russia poured 46% of its budget into the military — June 14, 2026

UA.NEWS — Russia's military spending has reached an unprecedented level — June 17, 2026

Russianomics (Janis Kluge) — Russian military spending surges 30% — June 12, 2026

Secondary sources

Zone Armée — Russia devotes nearly half its budget to the war, according to Mark Rutte — June 20, 2026

Foreign Affairs Forum — Russia's war economy has problems but is not about to crash — June 23, 2026

Meduza — High oil prices and tax hikes aren't enough to offset war spending — June 9, 2026

United24 Media — Russian financial officials warn Putin that war spending has reached unsustainable levels — June 1, 2026