MOSCOW, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Monday that ensuring Russia's defense and security would be one of the federal budget's priorities for the next three years.
"The Finance Ministry's tasks have always been to strike a balance and to ensure that this balance does not affect the economy or the high cost of money, and that funds go to the most important things -- which for us now are defense and frontline tasks," he said at the Moscow Financial Forum.
Siluanov added that the Russia's 2027 federal budget would be set with a deficit of about 2 percent of GDP.
Commenting on a new sanctions bill adopted by the United States targeting Russia's energy and defense sectors, Siluanov said: "You know, we've probably already built up immunity to all kinds of sanctions -- hellish or not. We just go about our business, and the hellish sanctions, as they say, bounce off our financial policy." ■