A big chunk of the military budget obviously went somewhere besides the military....
Obviously. If they intend to compete with USA, they need at least 2 wars in every decade,
to keep army in good shape and root out corruption
If Russia could break through the lying media, and show the people of the world that they are in favor of peace, the world would overthrow their governments to get Russian peace.
Wouldn't it be quite easy for Russia to break through the lying media by stopping their media to lie? As much as this sounds like a circular conclusion, it makes a lot of sense since there was a whistle blower who leaked the Vulkan files. Those are 5,000 pages of documents showing the sophisticated instructions and requirements as to how and what cyber attacks should be done and how Vulkan is supposed to spread disinformation.
As bad as it is what the USA has done at times, shown by the Snowden leaks, nobody really refuted that the material leaked by Snowden was true. I expect that it will be said that the Vulkan files are fake.