The defense Ministry reported a decrease in the cost of the army without loss of defense
Moscow. 30 Oct. INTERFAX.RU — the defense Ministry of the Russian Federation due to optimization of expenses compensated the negative effect of reducing funding to the armed forces, Deputy defense Minister Tatyana Shevtsova.
“A decrease in government spending on defense though, and creates for us some difficulties, however, due to cost optimization, it does not affect the defense capability of the country,” Shevtsova said in an interview with the official of the defense Ministry newspaper “Red star”.
“In 2016 in the framework of the program “Effective army” direct reduction of expenditure amounted to 14.2 billion rubles, and the indirect effect not less than 22.5 billion rubles,” — said the Deputy Minister.
According to her, the main focus of the programme is “improving efficiency of budget spending by reducing the complexity and energy intensity of processes associated with the life of the Armed Forces”.
Earlier, defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that due to the “Efficient army” the Ministry managed to save more than 80 billion rubles. The Minister noted that the Russian military spending is 11 times less than the expenditure on the army of the United States. According to him, the maintenance of one soldier costs the Russian budget of 54 thousand dollars a year.