According to a major conflict and weapons think tank, Russia’s war in Ukraine caused the highest yearly rise in military expenditures in Europe since the conclusion of the Cold War three decades ago, driving global military spending to a record level last year.
Global military spending increased by 3.7% in real terms to $2.24 trillion in 2022, according to a statement from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Following years of rising tension, Russia invaded Ukraine in February of last year, prompting European nations to hastily fortify their defenses.
Moscow claims that the “special military operation” was required to protect it from what it perceives as an adversarial and aggressive West. According to Ukraine and its friends in the West, Russia is launching an unprovoked war to seize territory.
Russian and Ukrainian increases were the main drivers of the 13% rise in European military expenditure last year, but many other European nations also increased their military budgets and made plans for more as tensions rose.
SIPRI Senior Researcher Diego Lopes da Silva remarked that multi-year proposals to increase investment from numerous administrations were mentioned. We may predict that military spending in Central and Western Europe will continue to rise in the next years as a consequence.
With the massive sums of financial military help from the West excluded, Ukraine’s military expenditure increased 640% in 2022, the highest yearly rise ever seen in SIPRI statistics dating back to 1949.
According to SIPRI, American military assistance to Ukraine in 2022 will reach 2.3% of all military expenditures in the country. Despite being by far the largest spender in the world, the United States’ total spending increased very little in real terms.
Although SIPRI admitted that numbers were “highly uncertain given the increasing opaqueness of financial authorities” since Russia’s conflict in Ukraine started, it is believed that its military expenditure increased by 9.2%.
“The difference between Russia’s budgetary plans and its actual military spending in 2022 suggests that the invasion of Ukraine has cost Russia far more than it anticipated,” said Lucie Beraud-Sudreau, Director of SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Programme.
