Similarly, Jane's Defense Weekly put the outlay at $40-50 million a day - but most of it in cost-free munitions produced during Soviet times. A leading Soviet military analyst, Pavel Felgengauer, itemized the expenditures. The largest articles are transport, fuel, reconstruction of areas shattered by warfare, and active duty bonuses to soldiers.
The expense of this brawl exceed the previous scuffle's. The first Chechen war is estimated to have cost at most $5.5 billion and probably between $1.3 and $2.6 billion. Russia allocated c. $1 billion to the war in its 2000 budget. Another $263 million were funded partly by Russia's behemoth electricity utility, UES. Still, these figures are misleading underestimates.
According too the Rosbalt News Agency, last year, for instance, Russia was slated to spend c. $516 million on rebuilding Chechnya - but only $158 million of these resources made it to the budget.
Russia has been lucky to enjoy a serendipitous confluence of an export-enhancing and import-depressing depreciated currency, tax-augmenting inflation, soaring oil prices, and Western largesse. It is also a major producer and exporter of weapons. Chechnya serves as testing grounds where proud designers and trigger-craving generals can demonstrate the advantages and capabilities of their latest materiel.
Some - like the Institute of Global Issues - say that the war in Chechnya has fully self-financed by reviving the military-industrial complex and adding billions to Russia's exports of armaments. This surely is a wild hyperbole. Chechnya - a potentially oil-rich territory - is razed to dust.
Russia is ensnared in an ever-escalating cycle of violence and futile retaliation. Its society is gradually militarized and desensitized to human rights abuses. Corruption is rampant. Russia's Accounting Board disclosed that a whopping 12 percent of the money earmarked to fight the war two years ago has vanished without a trace.
About $45 million dollars in salaries never reached their intended recipients - the soldiers in the field. Top brass set up oil drilling operations in the ravaged territory.
They are said by Rosbalt and "The Economist" to be extracting up to 2000 tons daily - double the amount the state hauls.
Another 7000 tons go up in smoke due to incompetence and faulty equipment. There are 60 oil wells in Grozny alone. Hence the predilection to pursue the war as leisurely - and profitably - as possible. Often in cahoots with their ostensible oppressors, dispossessed and dislocated Chechens export crime and mayhem to Russia's main cities.
The war is a colossal misallocation of scarce economic resources and an opportunity squandered. Russia should have used the windfall to reinvent itself - revamp its dilapidated infrastructure and modernize its institutions. Oil prices are bound to come down one day and when they do Russia will discover the true and most malign cost of war - the opportunity cost.