The apparent inability of the government to substantially increase allotments for national defense reflects on the one hand the crisis facing the country’s economy and on the other, the military and political miscalculations of the Kremlin, which appears to have thought that it would be able to force a settlement with NATO over Ukraine much earlier in the conflict. In an indication of the Putin government’s lack of preparation for the present state of affairs, no money is specifically set aside in the 2023 budget to finance the provisioning and payment of the 300,000 reservists just called up.
