Graph of the Day - Lessons learned from being occupied by the Soviet Union or attacked by Russia

In the two previous posts, here and here, I showed that Putin has increased Russian military expenditures significantly even though Russia has not been exposed to any external threat since the collapse of the Soviet Union and that countries which have been occupied or dominated by Soviet have increased their military expendiutres following Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

The “peace activists” that flood the newspapers with pro-Kremlin views never mention that Swedish military expenditures have decreased in constant prices since 1987. Neither do they mention Russia’s massive increase since Putin became president.

And the “peace activists” would never, never, ever mention that Russia’s expenditures have grown faster than USA’s and other large NATO countries’ expenditures. But not as fast as military expenditures in countries that have been occupied by Soviet or attacked by Russia.

Military expenditures relative Russian military expenditures in constant 2018 US dollars.

Source: www.sipri.org Note: All series are shown as logs of an index, which equals 1.0 at 2000 so the series start at zero. All series are calculated relative Russia’s expenditures. Since the vertical axis is in log units, the slopes of the series are the rates of growth. An increase of 0.1 is a growth of 100*(exp(0.1)-1) relative the growth of Russia’s military expenditures.

Sweden and the large NATO countries have yet to arm their military and increase their defence capabilites.