Official: Russia’s federal budget to remain militarised for years

Sergey Shvetsov, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Moscow Exchange, has urged people to prepare for the federal budget to remain militarised for many years, as Russia will need to replenish supplies and infrastructure and undertake rearmament, The Moscow Times reports.

“We have a problem — the budget. The budget is military, as Dmitry Anatolyevich [Medvedev] called it. And it will remain that way for another 5–8 years, because what do you do after a war ends? You prepare for the next war,” Shvetsov said at the Moscow Financial Forum.

“This is a normal phenomenon — replenishing stocks, new weapons, restoring infrastructure that has been destroyed in one way or another. So to say, ‘Well, let’s endure for another year, then there will be peace and the budget will return to 2021 levels,’ is an illusion. It will not return,” he added.

By Vugar Khalilov