New data reveals the Military Emissions Gap is growing wider

Major reporting gap: Russia

The Russian Federation is an Annex I country and the world’s third largest military spender. It spent $100 billion on its military in 2023 and has submitted emissions data for some military activities. However, this data is not clearly separated from civilian emission sources, obscuring the scale of Russia’s military carbon footprint. Meanwhile, key categories, such as mobile military emissions, including from military aviation, remain unreported. The absence of key data limits transparency, leaving the true climate impact of Russia’s military largely unknown, aside from some civil society efforts to assess it.

Moreover, Russia’s reported military emissions show a sharp dip from 40 MtCO₂ in 2020 to 21 MtCO₂ in 2021, and to 15 MtCO₂ in 2022 (2024 data release), before rising again to 42 MtCO₂ in 2023 (2025 data release). Military fuel use emissions were unlikely to have fallen in 2022, given that this was the year Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The reported drop may instead reflect declines in other, non-military sources that have not been clearly separated from military emissions, or inclusion of these emissions in another category, highlighting the need for more clearly disaggregated military emissions reporting. Alternatively, it could point to selective or incomplete reporting. Although Russia’s 2024 change in its emissions reporting methodology mainly concerns land-use, land-use change and the forestry sector, the shift raises broader questions about transparency, selective reporting and how accurately emissions and military emissions are captured.