Russia's Neighbors Ramp up Military Spending

Russia's neighbors in Europe have upped their military spending since the invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. But even over the course of the past decade, expenditure on defense had already increased substantially in these nations. Ukraine itself shows one of the biggest increases measured by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Its military expenditure rose by 640 percent from 2021 to 2022 and a still very significant 52 percent per year on average in the past five years compared to the five before that. In 2022, defense spending made up a third of Ukrainian GDP, according to the data.

Some of the next biggest spending increases could be seen in Lithuania and Latvia - two of Russia's direct neighbors -, but also in other Eastern European countries like Hungary (average annual increase of 18 percent), Bulgaria (+16 percent), Slovakia (+15 percent) and Romania (+14 percent). Because military projects are usually large, one-time expenses and updates to them are infrequent, annual average are used for the chart. According to these annual averages, Russia has actually spent slightly less in the past 5 years on its military than it did in the five years prior to that. However, between 2021 and 2022, spending increased by 9 percent in the country.

Despite the steep increases, the share of GDP spent on defense remained in line with the NATO goal of 2 percent in the Baltic countries, which are NATO members. Western European countries like Germany but also Italy, Spain or the Netherlands, stayed quite far behind this goal despite moderate increases in spending. Other European nations at and slightly above the 2-percent mark are Poland, the UK, Estonia, Croatia, Serbia and Greece. However, their spending had been at these levels since before the invasion of Ukraine.