Russia cut its military spending in 2017, a Kremlin spokesman acknowledged, just as the United States and its European allies have imposed steep sanctions on the former Cold War rival’s economy.
“There is a tendency of a small step-by-step decrease in spending,” Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Thursday.
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Peskov confirmed the drop after international analysts reported that Russia had slashed military expenditures by 20 percent. While Peskov disputed that particular figure, the cut represents the first dip in Russian military spending since 1998.
“The figures do not really correspond to reality, but the tendency is right,” Peskov said.
Russia last year spent $66.3 billion on defense, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, reported on Wednesday. Putin has touted new weapons systems and a resurgent foreign policy, but Western sanctions on the Russian economy have put a crimp in the resources available.
“Military modernization remains a priority in Russia, but the military budget has been restricted by economic problems that the country has experienced since 2014,” Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher at SIPRI, said in remarks accompanying the report.
Russian officials consistently downplay the significance of Western sanctions, which were imposed first in response to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine. The sanctions were stiffened in 2017, as punishment for the Ukraine crisis, Russian support for Syrian President Bashar Assad despite his regime’s use of chemical weapons, and the 2016 election interference.
“We’ve been able to turn its consequences to our advantage,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview published Thursday. “At the same time, we used the situation that had emerged to look for new economic growth areas, increase manufacture of our own products, and expand trade and economic ties with those countries, which are open to honest and mutually beneficial cooperation. And such [countries] make up the vast majority throughout the globe.”
SIPRI thinks the cuts will require Putin to trim military operations. “Russia definitely has a very clear feeling it has to show that it is still a major power, and you show that by undertaking operations in for example Syria, by showing up on the Atlantic Ocean with your navy,” Wezeman told Reuters. “But I am sure that there will be serious cost cuts to those.”
