Struggling with a recession amid low oil prices and measures to curb the pandemic, Russia is mulling over cutting its military budget by 5 percent between 2021 and 2023, recommendations from the Russian finance ministry showed . According to the finance ministry’s recommendations for budget expenditures in the next three years, as reported by Reuters, Russia is also considering cutting spending on the court system and on wages for civil servants by 10 percent. Spending on military is considered a state secret in Russia, but defense expert and the Editor-in-Chief of the ‘Arsenal of the Fatherland’ magazine, Victor Murakhovsky, told Russian outlet RBC that the 5-percent cut for the years 2021, 2022, and 2023 likely means that the budget for the Russian Defense Ministry may be lower by around US$3.17 billion (225 billion Russian rubles) for the three years combined. Last year, Russia was the fourth-largest spender on military […]