EDITORIAL: 40% of the Russian Budget for War — A Country Sacrificed on Putin's Altar

EDITORIAL: 40% of the Russian Budget for War — A Country Sacrificed on Putin's Altar

Introduction: The arithmetic of sacrifice

A budget that reveals everything

Some figures do not lie. When a state devotes 40% of all its public spending to war and security, that is no longer a policy — it is a confession. A confession of priorities. A confession of what an ordinary Russian citizen is worth in the eyes of his leader. Since the signing of Russia's 2026 federal budget, Vladimir Putin has etched in stone what had been sensed for months: Russia is no longer a state waging war — it has become the war itself. Everything else — education, healthcare, housing, pensions, everything that makes up the normal life of a country — comes second.

The data are damning and they come from everywhere at once. Euromaidan Press, citing an ISW analysis of the Russian Finance Ministry, reports that in the first quarter of 2026, military spending reached 46% of total federal budget expenditures — that is 5.9 trillion rubles, approximately $75 billion, in a single quarter. That is 30% more than the same quarter in 2025. German economist Janis Kluge of the SWP (German Institute for International and Security Affairs) estimates that if this trajectory holds, Russian military spending could reach 9 to 10% of GDP in 2026, far beyond the 6.2% written into the official budget. We have moved past war. We have entered consented self-destruction.

Putin's choice against his own people

The signing of the 2026 budget by Putin in December 2025 was presented as a routine planning exercise. It was not. It was an ideological declaration: social spending falls to 25% of the budget, a historic low since the Soviet era, according to the Centre for Countering Disinformation. National defence strictly speaking absorbs 12.93 trillion rubles. Add domestic security — police, national guard, intelligence services, the FSIN — and you reach 16.84 trillion rubles, or 38% of the planned total of 44.1 trillion rubles. But the first quarter of 2026 has already exceeded that announced ceiling. The Russian state no longer even respects its own budgetary fictions.

A State Duma deputy, Suleimanov, had the rare — and probably dangerous — courage to say what everyone sees: defence and security spending now represents approximately 40% of the federal budget, fueling inflation while cutting social investment. The Kyiv Independent reported his remarks in May 2026. A Russian parliamentarian who publicly sounds the alarm — that is a rare, almost subversive data point in the current context. It says something essential about the internal pressure this war budget is generating.

A war budget unprecedented since World War II

Historical proportions

The phrase "record since the Soviet era" is not journalistic hyperbole — it is the terminology used by Euromaidan Press in its December 2025 analysis of the Russian federal budget. In 2021, before the full-scale invasion, defence represented approximately 19% of the federal budget and 3.6% of GDP, according to SIPRI. In 2026, serious estimates place actual military spending between 6.3% and 10% of GDP, depending on methodology. The German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) uses the expanded NATO definition and arrives at 10% of GDP and nearly half of the federal budget, accounting for classified spending and related defence programs. That is a level of economic mobilization not seen in Europe since 1945.

To grasp the scale of the shift, trace the trajectory: in 2021, combined defence-security spending represented 24% of the budget. By 2025, it had reached 41%. In 2026, Q1 alone suggests that announced ceiling is already being exceeded. In five years, Russia has multiplied by 1.6 the share of its budget devoted to destruction. United24 Media documents that military spending from January to September 2025 reached $142.25 billion — a 30% increase over the same period in 2024. At that pace, Russia is spending approximately $13.2 billion per month on war. That is 43.4 billion rubles per day.

The war costs $209 million per hour

These figures are staggering. $209 million per hour: that is the United24 Media estimate for Russia's hourly cost of war. Every hour. All day and all night. While Russian children see their schools underfunded, while pensioners watch their purchasing power evaporate under galloping inflation, while SMEs struggle against interest rates that have exploded precisely to contain that war spending. The Russian Central Bank maintains its benchmark rates at historically high levels in an attempt to rein in the inflation generated by the massive injection of military spending into an economy whose labour market is short 2.5 million workers, who have gone to the front or to the arms factories.

The paradox is brutal: military spending fuels inflation, the Central Bank raises rates to fight that inflation, high rates strangle civilian businesses and indebted households, which reduces investment and slows growth. The result: interest payments on corporate debt now consume 38% of Russian firms' profits, a historic maximum according to Euromaidan Press. Russia has trapped itself in a spiral it cannot stop without admitting the war has failed.

Classified spending: the budget inside the budget

38% of federal spending is secret

The official 40% figure is already striking. But it masks an even more opaque reality: 38.2% of all Russian federal spending in Q1 2026 was classified, according to Janis Kluge's SWP analysis. And approximately 85% of that classified spending is associated with military programs. This is not merely war — it is hidden war. Programs whose nature, beneficiaries, and precise volumes are removed from any public debate, from any democratic legitimacy. A state that devotes more than a third of its spending to secret line items has stopped governing for its citizens.

The rise in classified spending is particularly concerning: it grew by 43% compared to Q1 2025. That acceleration suggests Russia is intensifying programs it cannot or will not defend publicly. Weapons development, intelligence, electronic warfare, cyber operations, equipment purchases circumventing sanctions — all of this is hidden in that budgetary iceberg. SIPRI estimates the official 2026 defence budget at 14.9 trillion rubles, or 6.3% of GDP. But the expanded calculations of the German BND suggest the reality is far beyond that — up to 10% of GDP when all war-related items are included.

A deficit spiraling out of control

Revenues cannot keep pace. Russia collected 8.3 trillion rubles in revenue during the first four months of 2026, according to Janis Kluge — meaning that Q1 military spending alone equated to roughly two thirds of total revenues for the first four months. The budget deficit for the first four months of 2026 reached $75.4 billion — 50% above the deficit planned for the entire year, according to Euromaidan Press. This is no longer a budget. It is a headlong flight financed by the printing press, the National Wealth Fund (NWF) reserves, and domestic debt that keeps climbing.

Russia's Ministry of Economy itself had to revise its 2026 GDP growth forecast downward twice, ultimately to 0.4%, according to Euromaidan Press. That came after growth that had already fallen from 4.3% in 2024 to approximately 1% in 2025. GDP actually contracted by 0.3% in Q1 2026 — the first quarterly contraction since early 2023. The war economy Putin built is eating its own foundations.

Ordinary Russians absorb the cost

Inflation as a silent tax

For the ordinary Russian, the war is measured less in kilometres of front than in rubles in the wallet. Inflation in Russia reached levels that forced the Central Bank to maintain its benchmark rate at historic highs, making credit prohibitive for households and SMEs. The VAT increase from 20% to 22% on January 1, 2026, combined with the lowering of the tax threshold for small businesses, represents a direct levy on everyday consumption. Russian newspapers have been speaking of "galloping inflation" since early 2026, according to Euromaidan Press. This is not an abstract phenomenon — it is the price of bread, fuel, and medication.

The social structure of this war economy is deeply unequal. Approximately 20% of Russians draw their incomes from military service or arms production — their wages have indeed risen. But the remaining 80% absorb the cost of the war through higher taxes, higher prices, and shrinking public services. Education, healthcare, social housing — all these budget lines have retreated in favor of the military-industrial complex. Euromaidan Press documents that military spending and debt service will together absorb 46% of the federal budget in 2026, while health, education, and housing combined receive only 13%.

The provinces bleed while Moscow shines

The geographical divide is striking. Moscow, benefiting from central power's financial flows, maintains a relative facade of prosperity. But ordinary Russian regions — those that supply the soldiers, not the oligarchs — are growing poorer. Construction materials production fell by 11 to 12%, according to Euromaidan Press. Automobile production collapsed by 61.6%. The railway sector plunged by 33.7%. Only the aerospace sector — serving the military — jumped by 86%. This is an economy digesting its own civilian sectors to feed the war machine.

Private investment has collapsed. After 0.5% growth over nine months of 2025, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak admitted before the Russian Senate in February 2026 that "investment has stagnated." For 2026, the ministry now projects a further 0.5% decline in investment. In an economy losing workers en masse to the front, where SMEs are strangled by prohibitive interest rates, and where uncertainty discourages any long-term project, that prediction is optimistic. Reality will probably be worse.

The logic of no way out

Putin can no longer stop

Understanding why Putin continues despite clear economic signals requires seeing the regime's internal logic. To stop is to admit failure. It is to acknowledge that more than a trillion rubles committed, more than 800,000 soldiers killed or wounded, years of economic sacrifice — all for nothing, or nearly so. The Russian political system does not survive that admission. Putin has therefore chosen acceleration: spend more, mobilize more, promise more, while hoping Ukraine collapses before Russia does. That is an existential bet. And the 2026 budget is irrefutable proof of it.

The logic is perverse but coherent: every additional ruble invested in the war retroactively justifies the previous rubles. That is the phenomenon economists call the "sunk cost fallacy" applied to military policy. The greater the sacrifice, the more stopping becomes psychologically — and politically — impossible. The 2026 budget is therefore both a financial reality and an ideological prison: Russia is now too deeply committed to withdraw without regime collapse.

The signal from markets and institutions

Independent institutions are sending signals the Kremlin pretends to ignore. The IMF has reduced its Russia growth forecast to 0.8% for 2026, placing it at the bottom of major economies — below even war-torn Ukraine, which anticipates 2% growth. The CMACP, a Moscow forecasting institute linked to the government, declared in January 2026 that the Russian banking system now meets the formal criteria for a systemic crisis: non-performing assets exceed 10% of total loans, with 19% of SME loans classified as problematic. The same analysts estimated the probability of a formal recession by July 2026 as "virtually inevitable."

The National Wealth Fund, the sovereign reserve Russia built to cushion shocks, is on the path to exhaustion. According to various estimates, it represents no more than 1.8% of GDP — an increasingly thin cushion to absorb deficits that are exploding. Russia is borrowing massively on the domestic market, at high rates, to finance a war generating record deficits. That is a classic spiral: deficit → borrowing → rising rates → strangulation of the civilian economy → falling tax revenues → larger deficit. The question is no longer if, but when.

The war's burden on Russian businesses

Interest rates strangling the private sector

The Central Bank of Russia's benchmark rate remained at historically high levels throughout 2025 and into early 2026, in a desperate attempt to contain inflation fueled by massive military spending. The result is paradoxical: civilian businesses without access to defence contracts find themselves strangled by prohibitive financing costs. 38% of Russian companies' profits go toward interest payments — a level never reached in Russia's recent history, according to Euromaidan Press.

Civil manufacturing output has been running at nearly 5% below its December 2024 levels for several consecutive months. Twelve consecutive months of industrial output decline — that is the longest contraction indicator observed in Russia's recent history. SMEs, the artisans of daily economic life in any society, are subjected to interest rates that make any investment suicidal. Borrowing to invest in an ordinary commercial activity, in an environment where rates exceed 16 to 18%, is an equation no rational actor accepts.

Civilian deindustrialization in wartime

The Russian economy is radically reorganizing around the war, and not in a way that prepares for the future. The defence aerospace sector is exploding, but the sectors that ensure a society's long-term economic health — civilian transport, construction, technology, services — are contracting. Automobile production collapsed by 61.6%. Russia massively imports components it no longer manufactures, often via third countries circumventing sanctions, at marked-up costs. Dependence on imports in light industry remains at 60 to 80% according to one Duma deputy — a structural vulnerability the war has only deepened.

On the labour market, the toll is equally devastating. 2.5 million workers have left the civilian labour market since the start of the full-scale invasion, drawn toward the armed forces or weapons factories by military wages inflated by combat bonuses. That haemorrhage of skilled labour is probably irreversible in the short term. When the war ends — if it ends — Russia will have to rebuild a civilian economic fabric with a decimated generation, a militarized industry, and depleted human capital.

The international comparison: how far can this go?

Alarming historical precedents

The history of war economies offers instructive precedents. Nazi Germany devoted up to 75% of its economy to war at the conflict's apex — but it was occupying and looting entire continents. The USSR mobilized comparable resources during World War II, but benefited from massive American Lend-Lease aid and a planned economy that could brutally reallocate resources. Russia in 2026 is in neither of those situations. It is a partially modernized market economy, under massive sanctions, with no major economic allies capable of supporting it to the scale of its needs.

Contemporary economies that approached such military spending levels have almost systematically suffered severe crises. Iran under embargo maintained a survival economy for decades, but at the cost of massive impoverishment of its population. North Korea devotes approximately 25% of its GDP to defence — at the cost of a subsistence economy and periodic famines. These are the models that come closest to Russia's trajectory. Is Putin in the process of transforming Russia into a super-North Korea, with nuclear warheads as its only geopolitical card?

Sustainability in question

Experts are divided on the sustainability of this trajectory. The pessimist camp points to NWF depletion, GDP contraction, record deficits, and collapsed civilian investment as signals of an imminent crisis. The realist camp, like the analysis published by the Financial Times, notes that Russia faces a $28 billion shortfall in its war financing despite rising oil prices, but continues to issue domestic debt to fill that gap.

The truth is probably between the two: Russia can survive another two to three years at this regime, according to some estimates, but at the cost of a continuous and progressive degradation of living conditions. This is not a spectacular collapse — it is slow attrition. An economy that each year loses a little more substance, that is importing less and less future. And meanwhile, Ukraine resists, recoups, and produces. Time works against Moscow — but Moscow is still playing.

The effect of sanctions: slow but real

What Moscow can no longer buy

For two years, the Kremlin triumphantly announced that Western sanctions had failed. And the GDP figures of 2023 and 2024 — respectively 3.6% and 4.3% growth — seemed to support that claim. But those growth rates were fueled by military budget injections, not a healthy economy. Euromaidanpress and many economists described that growth as "war sugar" — real but artificial and unsustainable. Now that the fiscal stimulant is reaching its limits, the underlying reality is resurfacing: a technologically weakened economy, cut off from Western capital markets, and unable to import the critical components it needs.

Semiconductor sanctions have deprived Russia of access to the chips needed for its advanced weapons systems. It partially circumvents these restrictions via China, the UAE, and other intermediaries, but at marked-up costs and with delays that slow production. The missile shortages documented elsewhere in this series of articles — notably for S-300 systems — are a concrete manifestation of those constraints. Sanctions are not making Russia fall. They are wearing it down. And in a war of attrition, wearing down eventually proves decisive.

Exports crumbling

Oil remains Russia's main revenue source — and Ukrainian strikes on oil infrastructure are beginning to bite. Russian oil products exports fell 21% year-on-year in April 2026, and another 12% from March, according to Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko. Russia has been forced to reduce active well counts and refining fell by at least 10% in the first months of 2026, according to Ukrainian intelligence cited by Euromaidan Press. This is not anecdotal — it is systemic.

Falling oil and gas revenues hit the budget directly. Russia had planned its war spending on the basis of stable or growing hydrocarbon revenues. Those revenues are declining. Military spending is exploding. The deficit is deepening. The long-term capacity to finance the war is shrinking. This is exactly the effect sought by Ukraine's deep-strike strategy — not to instantly destroy the Russian economy, but to bleed it progressively until the cost of the war exceeds the capacity to pay for it.

The internal reaction: economic dissent

The rare voices that dare

In a system where dissent is criminalized, voices raised against the war's economic policy are rare and courageous. The case of Deputy Suleimanov, cited by the Kyiv Independent in May 2026, is notable: a Duma elected official who publicly calls for an end to the war, arguing that "the economy will not withstand a prolonged conflict." In today's Russian political environment, that is a position that carries real personal risks.

Even more troubling for the Kremlin: the CMACP, a think tank linked to the government, formally declared in January 2026 that the Russian banking system meets the criteria for a systemic crisis. This is not the liberal opposition saying that — it is an organization connected to the circles of power. When technocrats close to the regime begin to document the crises their bosses refuse to acknowledge, it is a sign that the disconnect between economic reality and official rhetoric has grown too large to be ignored even internally.

Russian economists' self-censorship

The vast majority of Russian economists and analysts practice self-censorship. Publishing analyses that contradict the narrative of "economic success" can be interpreted as sabotage or "demoralization." And yet, even in official publications, alarm signals filter through: the Ministry of Economy lowering its forecasts twice, the Central Bank speaking of the "edge of recession," investment statistics revealing stagnation. Facts are stubborn, even when one prefers not to see them. Western and Ukrainian analysts tracking the Russian economy rely heavily on these official Russian data — which are already alarming enough without any amplification.

Economist Nabiullina, governor of the Russian Central Bank, is in an untenable position: she sees the data, understands the dynamics, and publicly stated in April 2026 that the labour market has lost 2.5 million workers since the invasion began. She maintains high rates because she has no choice — but those high rates strangle the civilian economy she is supposed to protect. She is in some sense a firefighter forced to water a burning building while another firefighter simultaneously diverts the water to feed a bonfire.

Europe facing Russia's war budget

The West must understand what these figures mean

For the West, Russia's war budget sends a clear message: Putin is serious. He is not pretending. He is not bluffing. He is genuinely sacrificing the finances, development, and long-term well-being of his country to pursue this war. That should change how Western leaders think about aid to Ukraine. If the adversary is prepared to burn its own economic foundations in order not to lose, the response cannot be timid. Every Western hesitation, every delay in weapons delivery, every premature diplomatic compromise gives Putin time to hold on.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte presented Trump with charts showing $1.2 trillion in additional defence spending by European and Canadian allies since 2016. That is considerable — but is it enough against a state devoting 46% of its budget to war? The question is not rhetorical. It is strategic. The engagement ratio is fundamentally different: NATO has been increasing defence spending after decades of underinvestment. Russia, for its part, has bet everything on the next battle.

Sanctions must intensify

If Russian military spending depends on oil revenues for 40 to 50% of state financing, then any action that reduces those revenues is strategically decisive. The oil price cap imposed by the G7 has been partially circumvented, but its real effect on Russian revenues is documented. The real lever is making that circumvention harder and more costly — by targeting "shadow fleets" of tankers, financial intermediaries in third-party countries, and refinery technology suppliers. Every billion fewer in oil revenues for Russia is a billion fewer to finance the missiles that kill Ukrainians.

Ukraine's deep-strike strategy against Russian energy infrastructure follows this logic. Reducing refining capacity, disrupting exports, forcing additional repair costs — all of this worsens Russia's budget deficit and accelerates the depletion of reserves. Ukraine is not only fighting on the battlefield — it is fighting on its enemy's balance sheet. And that economic dimension of the conflict may be the most decisive over the long term.

The Chinese model as a disturbing mirror

China as comparison and as threat

China watches Russia's economic trajectory with a mix of opportunism and caution. On one side, Russia's growing dependence on Beijing — for technology imports, alternative export markets, indirect financing — reinforces Chinese influence over Moscow. On the other, China does not want a bankrupt partner — an economically collapsed Russia would be more burden than geopolitical asset. There is therefore a paradoxical Chinese interest in Russia surviving economically, while remaining sufficiently dependent to be controllable.

For the West, the real risk is that China becomes the lender of last resort of Russia's war economy — supplying the electronic components, machine tools, and dual-use goods that Western sanctions seek to block. The decision of the Biden administration, and potentially Trump's, to sanction Chinese companies supplying technologies to Russia is crucial. Without this pressure, Western sanctions have a hole called China — and through that hole, a significant portion of Russian war-fighting capacity continues to be fed.

Iran and North Korea as economic satellites

Russia's military-economic cooperation with Iran and North Korea is documented and worrying. Iran supplies Shahed drones. North Korea sends artillery shells and troops. These two countries receive in exchange Russian military technologies and probably financial transfers. Russia's war economy is therefore partially subsidized by rogue states who themselves circumvent international sanctions. That informal network of pariah war economies is a geopolitical reality the West has not yet fully addressed.

The long-term question is: how far can Putin transform Russia into a permanent war economy on the North Korean model? The answer depends on the Russian population's tolerance for a declining standard of living, the elites' ability to maintain their privileges, and China's willingness to economically sustain that model. These are three variables none of which are under Western control — but which the West can influence through its sanctions, its support for Ukraine, and its diplomacy with Beijing.

What the budget reveals about the conflict's duration

Russia is preparing for a long war

The 2026 budget and Q1 data send an unambiguous signal: Russia is preparing for a long war. The maintenance and even increase of military spending despite falling revenues, despite record deficits, despite GDP contraction — all of this indicates that Putin is not looking for a quick exit. He is betting on Western exhaustion, on the fatigue of democracies, on an American or European election that would shift the balance of support for Ukraine. That is a strategy that requires time — and time costs rubles.

Projections of military spending for 2027 and 2028 written into the multi-year budget point to continuation at similar levels: 13.6 trillion rubles in 2027, 13 trillion in 2028. These are the official figures — the actual amounts will probably be higher, given the trend. Russia is programming its war across multiple budget years. That is not the behavior of a country looking for an honorable exit. It is the behavior of a country that believes it can hold out longer than its adversaries.

Ukraine must hold — and the West must too

Faced with that reality, the conclusion is unavoidable: the sustainability of Western support for Ukraine is not a diplomatic luxury — it is a strategic necessity. If Russia is betting on Western exhaustion, the only way to defeat that bet is to demonstrate that the West can support Ukraine for as long as necessary — and that the economic cost to Russia grows faster than the political cost to the West. Weapons deliveries, sanctions, Ukraine's deep strikes on Russian infrastructure — each of these contributes to accelerating Russia's economic exhaustion.

Ukraine needs time, ammunition, and air-defense systems to hold on. Russia needs time for the West to tire. That economic and political race against the clock is the real heart of the conflict in 2026. Russia's 40% war budget is not merely a statistic — it is a declaration of intent. The West's response must be commensurate with that declaration.

The political significance of this budget for Russia's future

An economy mortgaging its future

Beyond the current war, the 2026 budget raises a fundamental question about Russia's future: what country will emerge from this war? An economy that has sacrificed its investment, deindustrialized its civilian sectors, depleted its reserves, impoverished its provinces, and lost a generation of workers — that is an economy that will need to rebuild under extremely difficult conditions. Post-war Russia, whatever its outcome, will be economically scarred for decades.

Authoritarian regimes have a capacity to make their own populations bear the cost of their strategic errors rather than their leaders. Putin and his circle will not personally suffer the economic consequences of this war. Their oligarch friends have assets abroad, sanctions circumvention networks, and gold holdings. It is ordinary Russians — those who pay taxes, buy bread, send their sons to the front — who will pay the bill for this war for decades. That is perhaps the cruelest aspect of this budget: it socializes costs while privatizing decisions.

The regime's legitimacy in question

A figure often neglected in Western analyses: authoritarian regimes do not survive indefinitely by impoverishing their population. When the implicit social contract — "accept our power, we guarantee you stability and an acceptable standard of living" — is broken, fissures appear. The demographic show of force constituted by the loss of 2.5 million workers, coupled with persistent inflation and reduced public services, erodes that contract. Dissent remains marginal in Russia — but silent discontent is growing. The calls for an end to the war from parliamentarians like Suleimanov are a symptom.

One must not overestimate the speed of this evolution. Repressive regimes have powerful tools — propaganda, repression, information control — for maintaining the appearance of consensus. But economic forces ultimately prevail over propaganda. When the ruble devalues, when inflation eats wages, when sons do not return from the front — no official narrative can indefinitely mask that reality. The 40% war budget is a bet on the regime's ability to maintain that mask long enough.

Ukrainians facing Russia's war budget: the asymmetry of resistance

What the Russian budget means for Ukraine

Against the equivalent of $120 billion that Russia devotes to its war machine in 2026, Ukraine must finance its own defense under far more difficult conditions. Ukraine's total defence budget for 2026 is also estimated at $120 billion — but roughly half of that depends on uncertain international financing. The fundamental difference: the Kremlin can mobilize state resources without accountability to its people, while Zelensky must convince foreign parliaments, European finance ministries, and an ambivalent American administration to keep funding the resistance. That is an asymmetry of domestic legitimacy that makes Ukraine's task structurally harder, even when the overall figures appear equivalent.

But that asymmetry also contains a hidden strength: Ukrainian support is legitimate, transparent, and controlled by democratic institutions. Western military aid — through mechanisms like PURL, EU loans, and equipment transfers — is verifiable, audited, and subject to public debate. Russia's war budget, by contrast, is opaque, largely classified, and partly financed by inflation and the spending down of sovereign reserves that no one in Russia can genuinely control. Over the long term, democratic transparency is a strategic advantage — even if in the short term it complicates the mobilization of resources needed for the resistance.

The race between Russian exhaustion and Western solidarity

The real question posed by Russia's 2026 war budget is this: will Russia exhaust itself before Western solidarity fractures? On one side, Russia's economic indicators — budget deficit at 3% of GDP, National Wealth Fund reserves at 1.8% of GDP, inflation above 9%, GDP contracting in Q1 2026 — suggest an unsustainable trajectory over two to three years. On the other, internal political tensions within Western democracies — national elections, Eurosceptic populisms, inflationary pressures — create risks of fracture in support for Kyiv.

The scenario most favorable to Ukraine is one in which sanctions continue to strengthen (the 21st package and beyond), Western military support intensifies through mechanisms like PURL and European funds, and economic pressure on Russia reaches a critical level before Western public opinion tires. That is a bet on the relative speed of two exhaustions — Russia's economy and the West's political will. For now, the data suggest that Russia is exhausting faster. But the outcome is not guaranteed.

Conclusion: The country sacrificed for one man

An unambiguous verdict

Russia's 40% war budget is a civilizational indictment. Not of Russia as a people — of Putin as a leader. He made that choice. He decided that an imaginary empire was worth more than hospitals, schools, and decent pensions. He transformed the economy of the world's eleventh-largest nation into a machine of destruction. That budget, in all its accounting brutality, is his political testament: he prefers to govern an impoverished, militarized Russia than to admit he was wrong.

For Ukraine, the message is of absolute clarity: Russia has bet everything on this war. It can no longer retreat without collapse. Zelensky and his people are not only fighting for their territory — they are fighting against an economic machine Putin built that cannot stop without destroying itself. This is an existential war on both sides. But on one side, there is a people defending their home. On the other, a regime defending its ego.

The West's choice

The West must understand that every dollar of aid to Ukraine is an investment that accelerates Russia's economic exhaustion. This is not altruism — it is strategy. A Russia spending 46% of its budget on weaponry is a Russia that is not building roads, universities, or future industries. It is consuming itself. Supporting Ukraine is the cheapest way for the West to weaken a revanchist power without committing its own soldiers. That calculation should be obvious. It should be beyond dispute. And yet every week brings its share of hesitations, compromises, and fatigue.

This Russian 40% war budget tells us something fundamental: Putin does not hesitate. He has made his bet. He is going all the way. Faced with that, Western hesitation is not prudence — it is passive complicity. History will judge.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Editorial positioning

This editorial expresses the author's personal view on Russia's war economic policy. The facts and figures cited are drawn from primary sources identified in the Sources section. The interpretations and value judgments are those of the columnist. MadMax's editorial line is resolutely pro-Ukraine and defends Western democratic values.

Recognized limits and biases

The author acknowledges that Russian economic data carries a degree of uncertainty, notably for classified spending. Estimates vary according to methodologies and sources. Economic forecasts are, by nature, uncertain. This text does not claim to predict Russia's imminent collapse, but documents real and concerning trends based on verifiable data. The author is not a trained economist and relies on the analyses of recognized specialists.

Sources

Primary sources

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

United24 Media — Russia again increases military budget, allocating 40% of 2026 spending to defence and police — September 30, 2025

Euromaidan Press — Record since the Soviet era: Putin's budget reveals Kremlin's priorities for 2026 — December 1, 2025

Kyiv Independent — Russian lawmaker warns economy will not withstand prolonged war — May 19, 2026

Secondary sources

United24 Media — Russia spent nearly every second budget ruble on war in early 2026 — June 13, 2026

Euromaidan Press — Russia's four-month budget deficit hit $75.4 billion, 50% above annual plan — May 19, 2026

United24 Media — Russia's war spending reaches levels rare since WWII, German intelligence says — March 3, 2026

Euromaidan Press — Russia's GDP collapsed, Kremlin think tank warns worse is coming — February 4, 2026