@samuelszuchan: The Russian government has proposed a 2027 budget that would allocate 17.1 trillion rubles ($200 billion) to the military, or 35% of spending. It wants to fund this by reducing spending on education by 6%, health by 6.8% and social programs by 7%. The state media budget will increase by 43%. In an article for Foreign Affairs on September 30th, Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine's foreign minister until 2024, argues that Mr Putin has reshaped the Russian economy and elite to serve the war, so that "ending it is riskier for him than continuing". Graduates of Time of Heroes, the Kremlin project that trains veterans for government roles, now lead regions such as Belgorod. An advert for Alabuga in Tatarstan, where Russia builds its Shaheds, shows a 16-year-old called Darina, who says she earns 150,000 rubles a month ($1,900) and adds: "My parents are proud of me." This summer Russia massively ramped up its use of a jet-powered version of the Shahed, with the number launched rising from 350 in June to 2,850 in August, according to Ukraine's air force. The drones cost "several tens of thousands of dollars" each and Ukraine's cheap air-defense systems struggle to shoot them down. As the drones usually come alone or in small groups, every incursion prompts a new air-raid alert in Kyiv. In September the capital spent 242 hours in alert, around a third of the month. On the night of September 7th an alert lasted ten hours. The next morning the metro was still not running. On September 25th Mr Putin described the attacks as retaliation for Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries. "They started all this," he said. "So they must feel these retaliatory strikes." Kuleba argues that the "principal target" of Russia's campaign is "the will of the Ukrainian people and of their partners". Inside Kyiv, however, the share of Ukrainians willing to endure the war "as long as necessary" increased to 69% from 61% in April, according to the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology. It is Ukraine's foreign supporters that seem less certain: the finance ministry calculates that next year the country will need $52.5 billion in foreign funding, $32.6 billion of which currently has no identified source. On October 1st, the day after Kuleba's article was published, the Orenburg region in Russia appointed a new vice-governor from Time of Heroes to be in charge of the war (or "special operation", in Russian parlance) as well as regional security.

Sam Szuchan

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Region: US

Wednesday 07 October 2026 17:00:00 GMT