🇷🇺🇺🇸 Russia's military budget buys close to 90% of America's in artillery shells - IntelliNews Lambda

Russia's military budget is a fifth of America's in dollars, but counted in artillery shells rather than dollars, it buys close to 90% as much.

And the Kremlin is spending big - and more than it can afford. Nominally, Russia's military spending this year is on course to approach RUB17 trillion ($211bn), which is as much as RUB5 trillion ($62bn) more than it initially planned to spend at the start of this year.

While official figures are opaque, the government's budget plan had pencilled in RUB12.1 trillion ($150bn) for "national defence" in 2026, while SIPRI estimated total actual planned military expenditure at RUB14.9 trillion ($185bn), or 6.3% of GDP, in March. Next year's 2027 budget will lift defence spending again to RUB17.1 trillion ($212bn), or a whopping 41% of all spending.

It's a lot of money, but it is still only a fifth of what the $961.6bn the Pentagon requested for FY2026. And if President Donald Trump gets his way, that will rise to $1.5 trillion next year.

However, spend a dollar in Russia and it goes a lot further than one spent in the US as wages and input costs are a lot lower. Consequently, economists prefer to compare PPP (purchase power parity) adjusted spending that takes this difference in price into account.

At the Bank of Russia's official rate of RUB80.56 to the dollar, RUB17 trillion ($211bn) adjusted for PPP Russia's defence spending is worth about $574bn - not 22% of US spending but close to 60% of the US figure - still a big gap, but may be enough to keep Russia in the game if it went to war with the US.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies made the same kind of adjustment in its Military Balance 2025, valuing Russia's 2024 defence spending of RUB13.1 trillion ($163bn) at $462bn in PPP terms - more than the EU and the UK combined that would be in the frontline if war in Europe really does break out.

The story doesn’t stop there as even the PPP adjustment flatters the US. The PPP adjustment is an aggregate adjustment to the value of the currency that takes everything into account, but military production is very specific. The difference between what a dollar spent in the market can buy you in the market is not the same as what it pays for in Russia’s drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan or the artillery shell plants in the depths of Siberia.

On the flip side, the US defence sector is bloated, and its products are, in comparative terms, badly overpriced. Instead of comparing dollar-for-adjusted dollars, it makes more sense to compare the cost of production of like-with-like. A dollar of Pentagon money buys fewer shells, tanks and jets than a dollar's worth of rubles does in Russia. Counting the military spending in terms of "artillery shell production units" then Russia's spending on the weapons it actually uses in its war in Ukraine is just under 90% of US spending.

Artillery shell units are the basic comparison as everything that goes into making the Soviet-era standard 152mm shell is Russian: the metal, the gunpowder, the power, the labour. One shell costs an estimated $1000 to make, according to defence publication Militarnyi, whereas the Nato equivalent 155mm shell costs $4000 to make in the US, according to consultancy Bain & Company. The PPP adjustment implies the Russian shell should be about 2.7-times cheaper, but the actual difference is Russian shells are four-times cheaper to make than American shells.

If the war were entirely about shelling the enemy then Russia and the US spending is almost on a par.

🔗 https://www.intellinews.com/russia-s-military-budget-buys-close-to-90-of-america-s-in-artillery-shells-intellinews-lambda-480605/

🇪🇺 Europe's heating season underway as gas drawdowns start from record low storage

Europe has started burning through the smallest winter gas reserve since records began in 2011, with EU storage sites 74.6% full on November 1 after five days of withdrawals.

Storage topped out at 74.96% on October 27 and has slipped every day since, to 844 TWh (80bcm), according to Gas Infrastructure Europe's AGSI transparency platform.

The previous lowest seasonal peak was 77.5% in October 2021, on the eve of the 2022 energy crisis. A year ago the bloc's sites were 82.8% full on November 1, and the average for the date over 2011-2025 is 90.5%.

Europe is going into the cold months with about a sixth less gas in hand than usual, and prices have become hostage to the headlines from the Gulf. The Dutch TTF benchmark broke through €100 per MWh ($1,180 per thousand cubic meters, €29.31/MMBtu, or $32.87/MMBtu) in October for the first time since December 2022, and the October average was about $1,000 per 1,000 cubic metres - 2.6-times the level of a year earlier, TASS calculated from ICE data.

The December TTF contract then fell more than 3% at one point on November 2, to about €95.21 per MWh, its lowest since October 29, after Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei had authorised talks with the US, the agency reported, however this decrease is not expected to last as Reuters reported today that the U.S. and Iran haven't made any breakthroughs in negotiations.

EU rules require member states to have their storage 90% full at some point between October 1 and December 1, with up to 10 percentage points of leeway when filling proves difficult. With withdrawals under way below 75%, even the lower bar is now out of reach, and forecasters had already warned of a 14bcm winter shortfall. Germany, the EU's biggest consumer, was only about 61% full, and its failure to fill its tanks has opened a row with Italy.

Storage at its lowest in 15 years leaves Europe more exposed than usual this winter, especially if the weather turns cold, Equinor CEO Anders Opedal told the ADIPEC conference in Abu Dhabi on November 2, according to TASS. Many buyers, including Equinor's own customers, are now looking for long-term contracts, he said.

LNG has been carrying the load. Sendout from European terminals reached about 11.1bcm in October, the most in five months and 4% more than in September, though 12% less than in October 2025, according to the agency's calculations from GIE data.

LNG accounted for 42.4% of European supply over January-October, ahead of North Sea gas, mainly Norwegian, at 38.4%, North Africa at 9.6%, supplies from the east including Russian pipeline gas at 5.9% and Azerbaijan at 3.6%, ENTSOG figures to October 30 show.

EU imports of Russian LNG rose 10% y/y to about 16.5bcm in the first nine months, the agency estimated from Bruegel data, while the bloc's total LNG purchases fell 5% to 104bcm. Russia still covers about 11% of Europe's gas consumption, down from 45% before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, The Moscow Times reported.

The EU has committed to ending all Russian gas imports by the end of 2027, a phase-out the World Bank says could push European prices higher. Goldman Sachs estimated prices could rise to €150/MWh if this winter is cold and UNHCR just warned that is exactly what is expected. 

🔗 https://www.intellinews.com/europe-s-heating-season-underway-as-gas-drawdowns-start-from-record-low-storage-481346/

🇦🇪🤝🇪🇹🇸🇩 The UAE–Ethiopia airlift reached the highest monthly level I have ever recorded in Oct 2026, with at least 81 suspicious cargo flights out of Al Ain and Al Reef Airbase.

The surge was driven by around 23 Boeing 747 freighter flights from Al Ain, UAE, to Bole Airport in Ethiopia.

Of the 81 UAE–Ethiopia suspicious cargo flights recorded in October 2026, 52 departed Al Ain Airport, 26 Al Reef Airbase, two Fujairah and one Sharjah.

The busiest days were 11 and 20 October, with five flights each, followed by eight other days with four apiece.

🔗 AfriMEOsint