This is probably not a coincidence of timing. On the day Vladimir Putin signed a decree on mandatory military service in the fall, the Russian government unveiled a record increase in military spending for its 2025 draft budget. The head of the Kremlin ordered on Monday, September 30, that more than 130,000 Russians between 18 and 30 years old be sent to military service before the end of the year. At the same time, the Ministry of Finance announced a 30% increase in the defense budget. The message is clear: more than two and a half years after the launch of “special military operation” of the Kremlin in Ukraine, almost two months after the expansion of fighting in Russia since the incursion of the Ukrainian army into the Kursk region, the president and his government confirm their determination to continue the offensive, whatever the human and economic costs. .
The General Staff of the Armed Forces has certainly stated that young people were called up as part of the autumn mandatory military service. “will not participate” in the areas of “special operation”. Similar promises have already been fulfilled periodically since February 24, 2022 and the start of the offensive in Ukraine. But since then, families have said their children had been sent near the front. The spring mandatory military service had already called up 150,000 young people. And, on September 16, the Kremlin formalized a decree ordering an overall increase of almost 15% in the number of soldiers, bringing it to 1.5 million from the current 1.32 million. Therefore, one in every fifty active in Russia will be in the army which, according to Russian media, will become the second largest in the world after China’s. The Kremlin faces an increasingly pressing challenge: with the expansion of the conflict, which now extends from Crimea to the Kursk region, more men will be needed on the front but also in the rear. Young recruits could therefore be required to carry out remote missions previously entrusted to their elders now sent to Ukraine.
All this has a cost. Keep growing. The 2025 budget, which, in another carefully planned timing coincidence, was unveiled on the second anniversary of the alleged annexation of four Ukrainian regions, must now be voted on by Parliament and then signed by the president. A formality without debate or suspense in a parliamentary system under the orders of the Kremlin. The figures announced will therefore be almost definitive: defense spending will reach almost 13.5 billion rubles in 2025 (130 billion euros at the current rate).
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