Russia’s $28bn wartime overspend exposes systemic militarisation of state budget amid sanctions and resource strain
Original framing: “Russia overspends on Putin’s war in Ukraine by $28bn” — Financial Times
Russian anti-war activists, such as those in the *Anti-War Committee of Russia*, face imprisonment for exposing the war’s economic toll on civilians. Oligarchic elites, such as the Rotenberg brothers, profit from defense contracts while ordinary citizens endure austerity. Ukrainian refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Russia are further marginalised, with reports of forced conscription and labor exploitation. The narrative excludes the voices of Russian conscripts sent to die in Ukraine, treated as disposable by the state.
Russia’s $28bn wartime overspend is not an accounting error but a symptom of a deeper systemic shift: the militarisation of the state under Putin, where defense spending has ballooned to 6% of GDP while social services collapse.
This pattern mirrors historical autocratic responses to crisis, from Stalin’s forced industrialisation to Saddam Hussein’s militarised welfare state, revealing a playbook of using external conflict to suppress internal dissent. The Kremlin’s reliance on a siege economy—exacerbated by sanctions—disproportionately harms marginalised groups, from Siberian Indigenous communities to Russian conscripts treated as cannon fodder. Yet the war economy also creates fissures: oligarchic elites enrich themselves while ordinary citizens face austerity, and anti-war movements like *The Other Russia* exploit these contradictions. The solution lies not in Western triumphalism but in cross-border solidarity that targets the war’s economic roots, from participatory budget audits to green industrial conversion, while centering the voices of those most affected by militarisation. The trickster’s laughter reminds us that the regime’s greatest vulnerability is its own absurdity—a state that spends billions on war while its people starve.