Russia would need to spend 6% of its entire 2024 budget to pay wounded soldiers and families of dead troops, 2 researchers estimate
Matthew Loh | July 11, 2024The Kremlin would need to spend some 2.3 trillion rubles, or $26 billion, in promised one-time payouts to wounded soldiers or families of those killed in Ukraine, according to two researchers estimates.
That’s about 6% of Russia’s total budget for 2024, which is 36.6 trillion rubles, or $414 billion.
The figures were calculated by Thomas Lattanzio, a public service fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and Harry Stevens, a research assistant at the US think-tank Center for the National Interest.
In a commentary for War On The Rocks, they used estimates from French and British officials to ballpark Russia’s casualties from the Ukraine war. They arrived at a total of 400,000 wounded or dead, including 100,000 soldiers killed.
Russian law entitles families of killed soldiers to a one-time payment of 8.8 million rubles, with another 5 million rubles from a measure passed in 2022 just after the war began.
Lattanzio and Stevens wrote that stacked with additional payments of between 1 and 3 million rubles from local authorities, most families would receive one-time payments totaling about 14 million rubles, or $158,000.
Wounded soldiers also receive 3 million rubles, per the 2022 decree.
“Simple math shows that one-time payments would equate to 900 billion rubles for wounded personnel and at least 1.4 trillion for families of the dead, 2.3 trillion rubles total,” wrote Lattanzio and Stevens.
The cost of the one-time payments would be a “staggering amount,” they wrote.
Representatives for the Russian Ministry of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment . . .
https://dnyuz.com/2024/07/11/russia-would-need-to-spend-6-of-its-entire-2024-budget-to-pay-wounded-soldiers-and-families-of-dead-troops-2-researchers-estimate/
