Belarus has increased its spending on weaponry and military hardware sharply since 2022, budget numbers show. The increase coincides with Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine and has worried its immediate neighbors.
Government spending on military-related items -- including sophisticated Russian fighter jets and modern attack helicopters -- grew more than 2 1/2 times over the past three years, according to public budget and procurement documents reviewed by RFE/RL’s Belarus Service.
The 2025 budget for all defense spending now totals around 4.7 billion Belarusian rubles ($1.6 billion) or around 2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. That’s up from 1.8 billion rubles (US$694 million), around 0.95 percent of GDP, in 2022.
Among the weapons being purchased are advanced Sukhoi Su-30SM2 multirole fighter jets, Mi-35M attack helicopters, and Volat V-2 armored personnel carriers, along with hundreds of attack drones.
Belarus's military is investing in new Mi-35M attack helicopters.
Aleksandr Lukashenko, who has ruled Belarus since 1994, has embraced Russia as the country’s main protector. The two countries’ economies are tightly intertwined.
Lukashenko’s embrace of Russia grew even tighter after 2020, when he declared victory in a presidential election widely deemed fraudulent. The result sparked unprecedented street protests and a brutal police crackdown that led to the jailing of thousands of Belarusians.
Despite the close ties with Moscow, Lukashenko has tried to keep his distance from the Kremlin’s all-out invasion of neighboring Ukraine, steering clear of sending Belarusian soldiers to participate in the war. Russian forces launched part of their initial invasion in February 2022 from Belarusian territory. Wounded Russian troops and exchanged POWs also have been treated in Belarusian hospitals.
SEE ALSO: Hundreds Of Russian Soldiers Treated In Belarusian Hospitals, Investigation Finds“Lukashenko’s system fully relies on the Kremlin for its defense,” said Uladzimer Zhyhar, an activist with BYPOL, a group made up of former Belarusian police and law enforcement officers.
"Paradoxically, the level of Belarus's military spending suggests that despite flirting with Putin, Lukashenko does not particularly...expect that the Russian army will come and defend him, in case of a mythical NATO aggression,” said Ivan Kirichevskiy, a military analyst with the Ukraine-based online magazine Defense Express. “I would even say that the Belarusian army now has only one enemy: the Russian army.”
Nuclear Nuts
Western analysts have been particularly concerned about the possibility of Russian nuclear weapons being based in Belarus. Putin has pledged multiple times that Russian nuclear weapons would be deployed to Belarusian territory. Satellite images show expansion and upgrade of the Asipovichy military base, and indications that it could be used to store nuclear weaponry.
Lukashenko announced that a Russian-made nuclear-capable hypersonic missile called the Oreshnik -- named for the hazelnut tree -- would be deployed in Belarus by the end of the year.
SEE ALSO: Lukashenka Says Dozens Of Russian Nukes Deployed in BelarusA conventional version of the missile was used against Ukraine last November.
“You’ve seen how the Oreshnik works: the same missiles, the same strikes -- but without nuclear warheads, without radioactive contamination of the land and air. This weapon will be stationed in Belarus by the end of the year," he said on July 1.
Funding for the upgrade infrastructure does not appear in the budget documents.
Guns, Not Butter
The increased military expenditures come as the country’s overall economy is under increasing strain. Exports of oil-related products to Western markets have been sharply curtailed since Western isolation of Lukashenko after the 2020 election crackdown.
The country’s once-vibrant tech industry has all but evaporated, with coders, developers, and tech companies decamping to Poland or the Baltics to avoid repressive policies.
Outside budget experts warn that the increasing military spending puts the country’s social welfare system at risk, a network that the country’s aging population is heavily reliant on.
Social welfare spending is even higher now than before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Belarusian economist Alisa Ryzhichenka said.
“As a percentage of budget expenditures, the most goes to social policies,” Ryzhichenka said. But now “defense is catching up with this part of expenditures. And given that budget operates on a deficit, then there’s nowhere you can increase.”
“We need to reduce the social security, or something else, in order to add to the defense budget,” she said.