For the first time in history, the Ministry of Defense of Russia plans to postpone the payment of December salaries for military personnel to January of the following year. According to the department's draft order, starting from 2026, the annual settlement for the last month of the year will be carried out in the new financial period. According to RBC, the initiative is linked to a sharp rise in the budget deficit at the end of the year and an attempt by the government to balance cash flows by shifting a significant portion of state spending to the next period.
How Payment Procedures Will Change
Previously, settlements with personnel were carried out before the end of the current year, a practice inherited from Soviet times. Now, according to the draft order, money for December will be transferred between January 11 and 21. However, the innovation will not affect all military personnel: fighters directly participating in combat operations against Ukraine will continue to receive their December payments ahead of schedule — by December 25. Thus, the department is effectively dividing personnel into two categories with different calculation schedules.
Causes: Deficit and Military Spending
Financial pressure on the budget is driven, according to the document's authors, by enormous war costs. Russia's state expenditures this year are expected to exceed the initial plan by approximately 10% and reach 48.5 trillion rubles (about $602 billion). The projected deficit by the end of the year will rise to 7.3 trillion rubles (about $90.5 billion), or up to 3.2% of GDP, whereas in September this figure was around 2.2%. The Kremlin's budget plans indicate that high military spending will remain in the coming years.
Growing Army Size Increases the Burden
The explanatory note to the budget draft notes that personnel payments over the next three years will account for 9 to 10.4% of total national defense expenditures. Additional pressure is created by the constant increase in the size of the armed forces: in September, Vladimir Putin signed a decree increasing the statutory size of the army to 2,441,630 people, of whom 1,550,500 are active military personnel. Since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, the established number of troops in Russia has increased by more than half a million people.
Context: Preparing for Offensive and Sabotage Activity
Against the backdrop of budgetary decisions in the southern direction, Russian troops have completed preparations for mechanized assaults this autumn and are moving armored vehicles to areas planned as starting positions for an offensive. Furthermore, according to reports, the Russian leadership has ordered intensified sabotage activities against NATO countries, which could lead to a new wave of hybrid attacks on Alliance states similar to the August 5 incident in Leipzig, Germany.
