A former Russian politician, Illya Ponomarev, stated that the war costs Putin 20 billion dollars a day. This seems to be an exaggeration to me. Of course it is impossible to talk about precise figures, but approximately how much can it be? What a range of sums can be considered as more or less plausible? Millions dollars? Tens of millions? Hundreds of millions? Billions?
-
2What is "it"? The soldiers shooting or the country living? For example he could spend less on the army but still the rest of the economy could suffer a lot more. (As a comparison, Russia used to spend around 4% of GDP on military before the war).– NoDataDumpNoContributionCommented Mar 17, 2022 at 10:29
-
It is hard for me to give a precise definition of "it" unfortunately. But I think that in general my question is quite clear. The war takes money. Every day. It is obvious. How much? I apologise if this question is too vague and cannot be answered reasonably. I can delete it if so– Andrey ChernukhaCommented Mar 17, 2022 at 10:36
-
3"The war takes money." Yes, but from different people in different ways. Without specifying what you mean, you'll get vastly different numbers, not because there is lots of noise but because they all mean a different thing. To make it more specific: Do you only mean operational costs of the Russian army or include also all other costs for the Russian government or all costs for all Russians (you just said Russia)? Please decide what you want to know.– NoDataDumpNoContributionCommented Mar 17, 2022 at 12:43
-
4Note that the title question "How much is Russia spending" and the first statement in the question "the war costs" are not the same thing. Costs can be incurred that don't entail spending. The $20 billion figure refers to the cost of the war, not the checks written by the Russian government for things like payroll and military supplies in the last three weeks.– ohwilleke ♦Commented Mar 17, 2022 at 17:27
-
1@Trilarion it is very hard to estimate how much is the Russian military spending because there are quite a few channels that syphon money, goods and services into Russian military around the government.– fraxinusCommented Mar 17, 2022 at 18:50
2 Answers
About $20 billion per day (source, source). Big part of this comes from economic sanctions. So Illya Ponomarev is right.
The daily cost of war in Ukraine may exceed $20 billion for Russia, according to a recent study.
The study, conducted by the Centre for Economic Recovery, CIVITTA and EasyBusiness, said that direct losses in the first four days of the war were about $7 billion, including military equipment and casualties among personnel.
Citing the study, CIVITTA said: "The total daily cost of war for Russia is likely to exceed $20-25 billion given logistics, personnel, rocket launches, etc."
Beyond military costs, the study also mentioned fiscal pressure on the Russian economy, saying: "As a result of sanctions pressure, the financial sector of Russia has suffered irreparable losses."
-
1I digged up more direct citations for CIVITTA (civitta.com/articles/…) and drive.google.com/file/d/1x0e77y7bjHOMyV3besBfU66C94xw_ZO0/view. Maybe someone could kind of summarize what is in that report or comment on the methodology and reputation of the study. Commented Mar 17, 2022 at 15:06
-
2The estimation seems to have been done by easybusiness.in.ua/en/2020-2 someone in Ukraine. It might be biased. Commented Mar 17, 2022 at 15:07
-
5Link only answers are discouraged since if the links break the answer would become useless. I've quoted the relevant parts of the first article in the question. Feel free to edit or expand upon that Commented Mar 17, 2022 at 15:07
-
1Here is the full report en.calameo.com/read/005151365f835f7261566 with more details. Commented Mar 17, 2022 at 15:25
-
3Does that mean Russia has chewed through 15 trln USD? I didn't know it was worth so much in total.– alamarCommented Jun 21 at 20:57
According to most estimates, every day of the war in Ukraine costs Russia $500 million to $1 billion.[73][74][75][76]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine
According to estimates, the daily cost for the Ukraine war is between $500 million and $1 billion. Significantly less than the $20 billion quoted by the other poster.
We found that, as of September 2022, the direct military costs of the war might have reached $40 billion or 84 percent of 2021 national defense spending. Of this, operations and compensation amounted to $29 billion, and materiel amounted to $11 billion. Furthermore, GDP losses amounted to about $30 billion from April through June 2022, with annual losses for 2022 likely to be between $103 billion and $160 billion—between 6 percent and 9 percent of 2021 GDP, if not higher. In addition, the country has experienced $289 billion in financial capital destruction as measured by the market value of companies on the Moscow Stock Exchange.
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA2400/RRA2421-1/RAND_RRA2421-1.pdf
According to RAND, direct military cost is equivalent to $40 billion for a little less than a year. Annual GDP loss is equivalent to something between $103 billion and $160 billion.
-
6While an updated current answer to this question would be very welcome, the sources on the wikipedia article are all from May to August 2022, so this answer is just as outdated as the original one.– quaragueCommented Jun 25 at 6:06