In the first six months of 2023, total budget expenditure rose to almost 15 trillion rubles (€142.3 billion), an increase of 2.5 trillion rubles (€23.7 billion) on the previous year, with defence spending responsible for almost the entire difference, economic analyst Boris Grozovsky says. The Russian government has simultaneously increased military spending while decreasing spending in other sectors, which is “why budget statistics are no longer being released,” Grozovsky added.
As far as I understand Russia spending most of their money in the country itself to pay for the salaries of soldiers and manufacturing.
Instead, the state is just printing money,
If Austria is really financing the war, then only if Russia used that money to buy war stuff from elsewhere. For that I have no information. (I know that they buy from Iran and north Korea. However both of these countries do not use the euro?)
If Austria is really financing the war, then only if Russia used that money to buy war stuff from elsewhere
Does not compute. Money from Europe helps financing the war even if it’s domestic production. Money is fungible, you can’t say this specific euro or ruble is not used for weapons and therefore it’s ok to pay them. Western business helps prop up ruble exchange rate which limits inflation and domestic discontent, which allows Putin to spend more on domestic weapon production.
Parts of a lot of Russian weapons are of Western origin. That is stuff designed for civilian use, but can be used in weapons as well. For example GDS chips are used in smartphones, but also can be used in drones. That is the kind of stuff Russia needs hard money for. Then you have machining tools and similar products as well, which can be used to make weapons.
At the same time it enables Russia to focus its production on military products, if it can use hard currency for civilan goods.
Shouldn’t these thing fall under one oft the 11(?) sanctions packs we put on Russia so far?
