Vladimir Putin used an address to the first session of the State Duma on 30 September to call for a budget law that was balanced and realistic, and free of populism. He has made defence and the front the government’s leading priority.
The financial commitment was already substantial before the 2027 plan emerged. Since January 2022, Russia has spent 57.144 trillion rubles ($660 billion at the official exchange rate) on military and weapons purchases. Military spending reached 10.687 trillion rubles in the first half of 2026.
That first-half military spending was 30 percent higher than in the same period in 2025. It accounted for 43.8 percent of all federal budget spending, described as a new all-time high.
Russia’s war machine was consuming 1.78 trillion rubles per month in the first half of 2026, equivalent to 59 billion rubles per day or 2.5 billion rubles per hour. Spending from January to June 2026 was 65 percent higher than in January to June 2024, 285 percent above the first year of the war and more than fivefold the pre-war level of 2021.
By early August 2026, the federal budget deficit had reached 6.45 trillion rubles, twice the level planned for the whole year.
Against that backdrop, the Finance Ministry unveiled a draft budget for 2027 and plans through 2029. The Government approved the budget project on 24 September.
The draft allocates 17.1 trillion rubles ($205.2 billion) to defence in 2027, a post-Soviet record in nominal ruble terms. It is 26 percent above the amount previously earmarked for 2027 and 375 percent higher than the pre-war level of 2021.
Defence alone would take 35 percent of federal expenditure. Adding national security and law enforcement brings the total for security services to 21.4 trillion rubles, or 44 percent of all spending.
Social policy, health and education, grouped in the budget as human capital, would receive 21 percent of expenditure. For every ruble directed to those areas, the plan earmarks double that amount for the army, police and security services.
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov set out the government’s order of priorities plainly: “The most important thing right now is defense and the front,” he said.
Moscow plans to rely on higher taxes and borrowing to finance the military as oil revenues fall. The federal deficit reached 5.65 trillion rubles ($67.8 billion), or 2.6 percent of GDP, in 2025, and the government projected a shortfall of 7.3 trillion rubles ($87.6 billion), or 3.2 percent of GDP, for 2026.
For 2027, the government projects a deficit of 5.4 trillion rubles ($64.8 billion), or 2.2 percent of GDP. It has cut the cutoff oil price in its fiscal rule to $50 per barrel, after rewriting that rule three times in four years.
The public figures also leave much of the military bill out of view. Russia has released planned military spending rather than actual outlays since 2022. Two-thirds of the military budget is classified: 3.546 trillion rubles was disclosed and 7.141 trillion rubles went through classified spending in the first six months of 2026.
Economist Boris Grozovsky described the logic of the budget in harsher terms: “But the message is clear: everyone will pay for the war, as much as they can. Wherever a little more money appears, the government will come for it, while handing out as little as possible itself.”
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