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WORLD✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Russia decided to increase war spending after Putin’s meeting with Trump in Alaska, Bloomberg reports
Filed 1h ago · Via Meduza · The Buffoon Desk
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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: Christophe Licoppe / European Union · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
Bloomberg reports that Vladimir Putin ordered a sharp increase in war spending after concluding, by January, that no deal with Ukraine was coming, despite initial hopes following his August meeting with Donald Trump in Alaska. Sources tell Bloomberg Russia's defense spending could hit 17 trillion rubles by the end of 2026, a 40% jump over the 2025 plan and nearly matching the record figure already budgeted for 2027.
A year earlier, Russian authorities had planned to slow military spending growth in 2026 and start rebuilding depleted reserves. A separate account, from journalist Farida Rustamova's sources, instead points to Ukraine's strikes on oil refineries and storage facilities as the real driver of the budget increase.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
Two sets of sources, two different reasons for the same pile of extra rubles, and the one thing both versions agree on is that the war is not winding down anytime soon. A summit in Alaska that was supposed to open a door to peace seems to have instead opened the treasury. When the explanation for a government's spending keeps changing but the number keeps climbing, the number is the only part you need to trust.
