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Comment by tl | Hacker News Reader

Russian military spending: $66 billion

Ukrainian military spending: $5.4 billion

I have serious doubts the outside world dumped more than $5 billion on Ukraine's side. Russian made a serious error in how much territory they tried to hold as opposed to the re-positioning / fighting over Donbas that's happening now.

If the US ($801 billion) tried to conquer Canada ($26 billion), I would expect a similarly poor outcome based on Canada's size. If the US tried to annex specific oil rich areas under the guise of "protecting" oil pipelines, it's be reprehensible, but so was Crimea.

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The total spending does not say as much as you'd think, since a large percentage of the Russian military budget goes to the Strategic Nuke forces (which are not very useful for the war in Ukraine) and another sizable chunk goes to the navy (most of which is not even present in the Black sea atm). There are also sizable inland forces for "maintaining political stability" that take up money from the budget but can't be deployed abroad.

This means a large portion of Russian military spending can't be used in the current war. OTOH, almost every Ukrainian military asset they have was acquired with an eventual defense against Russia in mind so they have a much better rate of available fighting power per dollar spent.

> I have serious doubts the outside world dumped more than $5 billion on Ukraine's side.

They did send about $5 billion worth of equipment. It is probably a factor why Russia isn't currently sieging Kiev.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/22/ukraine-weapons-mil...

In the US alone the most recent spending bill allocated another $13.6 billion to Ukraine. [1] I've no idea what the worldwide total is, to say nothing of how much is coming from unreported black budget operations, but Ukraine is getting vastly more than $5 billion, they're getting it in less than 2 months, and they're able to dedicate 100% of it to this war.

[1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/15/politics/biden-ukraine-ai...

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