Where Data Tells the Story
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In the last two parts of this special series, we investigated the data behind every confirmed civilian death in Ukraine since the war started, and where many Ukrainian refugees have fled to across Asia and Europe.
Today’s visualization focuses on how much both countries have invested in their military in the last 15 years.
The data used comes directly from the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database.
It tracked annual defense spending from 2011 to 2025 in billions of US dollars at current prices.
The Trend
Russia’s military spending did not rise steadily leading up to the 2022 invasion. It fell first.
The SIPRI data shows Russia at $88.35 billion in 2013, declining to $61.65 billion by 2018 (a 30% reduction over five years).
The country that launched the largest land war in Europe since World War II spent a decade quietly cutting its defense budget before it did so.
The full-scale invasion reversed that entirely.
From $65.92 billion in 2021, Russia’s spending jumped to $104.4 billion in 2022, then $109.2 billion in 2023, $149.4 billion in 2024, and $190.42 billion in 2025.
That is a 189% increase in four years.
Russia is now spending approximately 6.6% of its GDP on defense, a level economists associate with wartime economies, where military spending displaces civilian investment in healthcare, education, and infrastructure in the national budget.