JRL NEWSWATCH: “Russia’s Effective Military Spending Is Around $200 Billion” – Checkpoint Asia/Richard Connolly

“When you take into account everything costs less in Russia the nominal $65 billion budget buys three times the military power it would in the U.S.”

“[On the one hand] … at $1.6 trillion in 2017, the Russian economy is not even in the world’s ten largest economies … roughly comparable … to Australia. … [if] measured at … the current ruble/U.S. dollar exchange rate. [On the other hand] … at $4 trillion, the Russian economy is the sixth largest … slightly smaller than Germany’s ($4.1 trillion). … if Russian GDP is converted into dollars at [a] purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rate. Much, then, depends on the choice of measure. … how living costs vary across the world, even for … near-identical products. * * * Russia maintains armed forces of around a million … compared with … fewer than 200,000 in the UK. … [and] procures and maintains far larger volumes of equipment across the whole spectrum … including intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear-powered submarines … state-of-the-art helicopters and fighter aircraft. … [along with] major military exercises and operations. … most of the costs … are denominated in rubles and not dollars…. PPP-based measures … yield a figure of closer to $200 billion, a sum that makes … more sense given the wide range of military goods and services …. a ruble buys relatively more military output in Russia than a dollar does in the U.S. …”

Click here for: “Russia’s Effective Military Spending Is Around $200 Billion; When you take into account everything costs less in Russia the nominal $65 billion budget buys three times the military power it would in the U.S.” – Checkpoint Asia/ Richard Connolly

Article also cites: “[PDF] Source: Oxford Russia Brief“