Putin faces army funding crunch as Russian MoD postpones December military pay
Russian leader Vladimir Putin (photo: Getty Images)
The Russian Ministry of Defense plans to shift the payment of December salaries for military personnel to January for the first time due to a sharp increase in the budget deficit at the end of the year, according to Bloomberg.
According to a draft order from the Russian Ministry of Defense, starting in 2026, the annual salary for military personnel for December will be paid in January of the following year.
Unlike previous regulations, which required settlements to be made by the end of the current year following Soviet-era practices, funds will be transferred between January 11 and 21.
However, this change will not affect everyone. Military personnel participating in direct aggression against Ukraine will continue to receive their December payments early - by December 25.
In this way, the Russian government is attempting to balance cash flows by shifting a significant portion of large-scale state expenditures to the next financial period.
Budget deficit and military spending
Russia's state expenditures this year are expected to exceed the initial plan by approximately 10%, reaching 48.5 trillion rubles ($602 billion).
As a result, the projected deficit for the year is set to rise to 7.3 trillion rubles ($90.5 billion), or 3.2% of GDP, whereas in September this figure was around 2.2%.
This overspending is driven by enormous costs associated with the war against Ukraine. The Kremlin’s budget plans indicate that high military spending will be maintained in the coming years, suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing for a multi-year war.
The explanatory note to the draft budget states that payments to personnel over the next three years will account for 9% to 10.4% of total national defense expenditures.
Growth in army size
Financial pressure on the budget is also intensifying due to the continuous increase in the size of the armed forces. In particular, in September, Putin signed a decree increasing the staff strength of the army to 2,441,630 people, of whom 1,550,500 are directly military personnel.
Overall, since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, the established number of military personnel in Russia has increased by more than half a million people.
In the southern sector, Russians have completed preparations for conducting mechanized assaults in the autumn. Currently, occupiers are moving armored vehicles to areas they plan to use as starting positions for an offensive.
Furthermore, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has ordered an intensification of sabotage activities against NATO countries. This could lead to a new wave of hybrid attacks on Alliance states, similar to the incident that occurred on August 5 in Leipzig, Germany.
