Visitors stand next to a scale model of Russian Sukhoi-30MK fighter aircraft at an India airshow
Russia's leaders are getting used to cutting budgets this year. As the country sinks deeper into recession unemployment, according to some estimates, is as high as 12% and the economy is predicted to shrink by about 4.5% in 2009 the government is slashing spending at most of its ministries. The Energy Ministry's budget is down by 33%, and that of the Transport Ministry by 30%. But there is one hugely expensive project on which President Dmitri Medvedev has vowed to actually increase spending: transforming Russia's creaking Soviet-era defense industry into a modern technological power, and turning the 1.1-million-man Russian...
