27 May 2025, 17:37 | Updated: 27 May 2025, 17:42

By Lubov Chernukhin

As Prime Minister Keir Starmer engages with EU leaders on European defence, it is significant to note that Russia is currently outspending the entirety of Europe on defence.

Coming to an eyewatering $145 billion, or 6.5% of its GDP and about a third of its government budget, Russia’s massive defence expenditure demonstrates that the country’s economic decline is less important to its leaders than its military build-up.

It is this expenditure that should rally the U.K. into revitalising its military industrial supply chains, while leading Europe towards re-armament.

Three years of full-scale invasion into Ukraine are exerting an increasingly dire economic toll on Vladimir Putin’s economy.

As Russia’s military spending has increased, its corporate debt has risen by 71 percent since 2022, with the government compelling private banks to make defence-related loans on its behalf.

This has funded the war effort, but at the cost of soaring inflation, hitting 9.52 percent last year and necessitating an interest rate of 21 percent.

As oil prices

© LBC