Reuters: Russia is budgeting a record 17.1 trillion rubles for the military in 2027, while cutting planned spending on welfare, education, and healthcare
Russia will cut funding for social programs, education, and healthcare in its 2027 budget compared with last year’s plan to help cover rising military spending, Reuters reported after reviewing documents.
Spending in the “social policy” category, which covers pensions, payments to combat veterans, and maternity benefits, will fall by 7%. Education spending will fall by 6%, and healthcare spending by 6.8%.
Spending in the “national economy” category, which includes road construction, infrastructure projects, and subsidies for agriculture and other sectors, will fall by 7.4%.
The documents show that debt-servicing costs in 2027 will rise by 21.6% compared with last year’s plan. They will reach 9.4% of budget spending in 2027, before rising to 10.6% in 2029.
Another source to cover planned military spending in 2027, The Bell notes, is an upcoming round of tax increases that could bring 1.5 trillion rubles into state coffers:
A tax on the metallurgical industry’s excess profits for 2026 would bring in 200 billion rubles of that amount. A progressive income tax on Russians’ passive income — including dividends, interest on deposits, and proceeds from property sales — could bring in another 500–700 billion rubles, economist Dmitry Polevoy estimated. The rest would apparently come from other tax measures: a 15% tax on mutual funds’ profits; an increase from 15% to 35% in the tax on dividends paid into nonresidents’ type C accounts; and a 22% value-added tax on purchases from foreign online marketplaces.
The previous day, Reuters reported that Russia had budgeted a record 17.1 trillion rubles for military spending in 2027, up from the 12.1 trillion rubles budgeted for 2026. The Bell reported that some of the increase in military spending has already occurred in 2026: actual spending this year will be far higher than budgeted.
At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.
If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at reports@meduza.io.
To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.