Russia is not going to go to war - Medvedev
MOSCOW. Dec 7 (Interfax) - Russia is not going to go to war with anyone and its military expenditures are less than its expenditures on education and medicine, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said.
"Of course, we are not going to war with anyone, we are a peace-loving country," Medvedev said in an interview with Russian television channels on Friday.
The budget of the Russian armed forces for 2013 is 2.1 trillion rubles, he said. "All defense, all armed forces are, naturally, financed form the federal part of the budget. It's in the interests of the entire country," the prime minister said.
The education and healthcare budgets are formed from several sources: federal, regional, and municipal, he said.
"If we calculate the consolidated healthcare and education budget, it would turn out to be larger than the Defense Ministry budget," the prime minister said.
The consolidated education budget is projected at 2.5 trillion rubles and the consolidated healthcare budget is projected at 2.2 trillion rubles next year, he said.
"In any case, it's more than the Defense Ministry budget. Taken together, these budgets are 2.5 times more than the Defense Ministry budget. In this sense, the budget priorities are perfectly obvious. And we are spending a lot of money on defense as it is. We had to increase the monetary allowance of military men, it was non-competitive, and we had to resolve the problem of providing housing to military men," Medvedev said.
