{"id":92650,"date":"2026-05-29T08:11:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T07:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=92650"},"modified":"2026-05-29T08:11:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T07:11:15","slug":"the-cost-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2026\/05\/29\/the-cost-of-war\/","title":{"rendered":"The cost of war"},"content":{"rendered":"

The FT reports this morning<\/a> that:<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s spending on Vladimir Putin\u2019s war in Ukraine is on track to blow through its budget by Rbs2tn ($28bn) this year, forcing the Kremlin to contemplate deep spending cuts in the coming years.<\/p>\n

Finance minister Anton Siluanov asked Russia\u2019s cabinet in February to freeze planned spending elsewhere to cover the mounting cost of the war.<\/p>\n

The request highlights Moscow\u2019s struggles to finance the war despite budgeting Rbs16.84tn ($238bn), or almost 40 per cent of this year\u2019s budget, to defence and security.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And we are meant to live in fear of Russia and its supposed capability to take on the West, as a whole, despite the obvious fact that it has not the slightest capacity to do so.<\/p>\n

Russia is at and beyond its capacity for war. And despite that, it cannot win.<\/p>\n

In that case, why are we being told to sacrifice people, communities, health and social care, the arts and much more to defence?<\/p>\n

Defence against what, I ask?<\/p>\n

What we need is defence against the fevered imaginatuons of neoliberal warmongers. They are what threaten us most.<\/p>\n

I am not saying we do not need defence, although much of what we have is utterly useless. I am saying we need the right defences, and we need to keep the scale of the threat in proportion.<\/p>\n

It's small.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The FT reports this morning that: Russia\u2019s spending on Vladimir Putin\u2019s war in Ukraine is on track to blow through its budget by Rbs2tn ($28bn)
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,16,106,223],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-ethics","category-politics","category-politics-of-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92650"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92651,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92650\/revisions\/92651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}