More than half of the spending, 56 percent, comes from three countries – the United States, China and Russia. This was reported by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) in its latest report.
The countries of Western and Central Europe spent 345 billion dollars (7.4 trillion crowns) on armaments last year and for the first time spent more than in 1989, when the Cold War ended, writes SIPRI.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine had a direct impact on the decision to increase these expenditures, and for the same reason their growth can be expected this year as well, added the analyst of the Swedish Institute.
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Finland increased its spending on armaments by more than a third, Sweden and Poland also by roughly a tenth.
Last year, Ukraine spent 44 billion dollars (942 billion crowns) on the military, more than six times the expenditure of 2021. Last year, military spending in Ukraine represented 34 percent of the gross domestic product.
Moscow planned to spend less
Last year, Russia sent even 86.4 billion dollars (1.85 trillion crowns) to the army and weapons, which represented about 4.1 percent of the country’s domestic product.
Last year, Moscow spent a third more on national defense, which is the largest item of Russian military spending, than it intended according to the original budgets, writes SIPRI, referring to official Russian data.
“The difference between Russia’s budget plans and its actual military spending in 2022 suggests that the invasion of Ukraine cost Russia much more than it anticipated,” said Lucie Béraud-Sudreau, Director of SIPRI’s Military Expenditure and Arms Production Program.
The United States remains by far the world’s largest military investor, despite high inflation.
Spending of 877 billion dollars (18.8 trillion crowns) represents 39 percent of all world funds for military purposes and is three times higher than that of China, which is in second place.
The US provided record aid
“The increase in US military spending in 2022 was largely driven by the unprecedented amount of financial military aid it provided to Ukraine,” said Nan Tian, senior researcher at SIPRI. “Given the scale of US spending, even a small increase in percentage terms has a significant impact on the level of global military spending,” Tian added.
The United States has sent almost $20 billion (428 billion crowns) to Ukraine to defend itself against Russian aggression, which is the highest amount given by any country to a single recipient since the end of the Cold War. Still, this sum represents only 2.3 percent of last year’s US military spending, notes SIPRI.
In fourth place according to the amount of military expenditure is India with a year-on-year increase of six percent, in fifth place is Saudi Arabia with an increase of 16 percent.
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