The expert spoke about Poland's manipulation of military spending

The Poles spend a lot on weapons, but at the same time they manipulate the figures of military expenditures, Dmitry Officer-Belsky, head of the Baltic Region Integrated Research Group at the IMEMO RAS, told Izvestia.

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"They write down everything they want in military expenses, they manipulate loans for the purchase of weapons. For example, the Polish authorities take into account loans in military expenditures when they are received and when they are given. In fact, the money is the same, but they use this kind of manipulation," explained polonist.

According to the expert, in addition, the Poles are transferring funds for research and development work from the budget section "Higher Education and Science" to the military budget.

"At the expense of the state budget, they are also engaged in additional capitalization of military-industrial complex enterprises that produce not only military products, and thus demonstrate an increase in defense spending, although in fact it is not really defense. The structure of military expenditures also takes into account funds that are allocated for the development of dual—use infrastructure: ports, roads, as well as civil defense costs," the expert explained.

In his opinion, the Poles are deliberately forming a budget deficit in order to negotiate subsidies from European funds during the negotiations on the future budget period for 2028-2034 and again become the main recipients of European money.

On August 28, the Polish authorities decided that in 2026 the country will spend 200 billion zlotys ($54.75 billion) on defense, which will amount to 4.8% of the republic's GDP.

According to Finance Minister Andrzej Domanski, this is the highest rate among NATO member countries.

Last year, Poland also became the leader among the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance in defense spending as a percentage of GDP — 3.82%. In monetary terms, Poland was ahead of the United States, Britain, Germany and France.

According to the Swedish Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Warsaw increased defense spending by 75% in 2022, sending $31.6 billion there. In 2024, spending increased to $35 billion.

Read more about how Poland is rapidly rearming in our article.:

Record spending: Poland will allocate the most of all NATO countries for defense