European leaders holding emergency talks in Brussels have agreed on a massive increase to defence spending, amid a drive to shore up support for Ukraine after Donald Trump halted US military aid and intelligence sharing.
But the show of unity was marred by Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, failing to endorse an EU statement on Ukraine pushing back against Trump’s Russia-friendly negotiating stance.
The 26 other EU leaders, including Orbán’s ally Robert Fico, the Slovakian prime minister, “firmly supported” the statement. “There can be no negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine,” said the draft statement, a response to Trump’s attempt to sideline Europe and Kyiv.
Which is still not a wartime economy. You are right that Russia is forcing the private sector to pick up the slack. Majority of military spending does not go into the Special Military Operation. The majority of forces in Ukraine are from irregular volunteer formations recruited from regions across Russia. These irregular volunteer formations rely on their local regional government to supply them with weapons and equipment alongside crowdfunding campaigns and donations from organizations like the Popular Front.
This is well shown by the Tuvan volunteers who come from the poorest region in Russia which shows in their equipment:
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Here are donations from the Popular Front:
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Chechnya was probably affected the most by this war economically speaking as they have recently taken up the burden of training and equipping a large portion of volunteers:
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So most of the federal government’s military spending (which is still larger than the entirety of Europe’s military spending combined when using PPP which is what really matters when talking about militaries) is actually not being used for the SMO but for a large-scale military buildup for future operations. This means regional governments are the ones footing the bill. But even so, they are not at a wartime footing. These regional governments outside of Chechnya are really only providing their soldiers with the bare essentials which really shows in Russia’s performance in this war. Like instead of actual military vehicles, soldiers are recieving old bread loafs and other civilian vehicles.