​​​​​​Estimates vary for Russia’s defence spending in 2025. According to Janis Kluge a researcher with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, it went up again, to $142bn for just the first nine months of the year — which, extrapolated for the whole year, would have surpassed 2024’s $149bn spending.

But according to Craig Kennedy, an economist at Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, actual Russian defence spending was on track to fall by 15 percent overall last year because of last-quarter budget cuts following an out-of-control deficit, and because of a drop in bank lending to the defence industrial base.

Ukraine’s defence spending has also shot up, from $6.9bn in 2021 to $41bn in the first year of the full-scale invasion, and $65bn for each of 2023 and 2024, according to SIPRI. Its 2025 defence budget was raised last October to a record $71bn.These increases have been funded by Ukraine’s allies, mainly the European Union and the United States, which have together contributed more than $300bn to Ukraine in military and budgetary support since 2022.After Donald Trump was sworn in as US president in January 2025, the US withdrew 99 percent of its support, shifting the financial burden onto Europe.Yet according to the Kiel Institute’s aid tracker support to Ukraine remained stable after the US withdrawal because Europe increased its contribution by about two-thirds. Last year, Europe contributed about $70bn in military and financial aid to Ukraine, while the US contribution fell to $0.4bn