president trump s call for another $54 billion in defense spending is reverberating far beyond u.s. borders. one unintended side effect being felt in russia. the 54 billion would only be a 10% spike for the pentagon, but it s more than the entire defense budget in moscow. now generals there are using trump s move to ask the kremlin for more cash. cnn s international diplomatic editor nick robertson is live in moscow for us. nick, all this talk about this $600 billion overall defense budget, it s a reminder to me even a rounding error in u.s. defense spending is more than most countries pay for their entire budgets. reporter: yeah, and that s the situation here in russia of course. their entire defense budget as you said is less than that increase the pentagon is looking at right now that donald trump wants. but here in russia for the last about four years they have been going through a massive military
president trump s call for another $54 kbl in defense spending is reverberating far beyond u.s. borders. one unintended side effect being felt in russia. 54 billion would be only a 10% spike for the pebt gone, but it s more than the entire defense budget in moscow. now generals there are using trump s move to ask the kremlin for more cash. cnn s international diplomatic editor nick robertson live for us in moscow. good morning, nick. this is just another reminder of how our defense spending dwarves that of other competing countries. reporter: absolutely. perhaps unintended consequences. it is being described here as by military analysts as a sort of arms race, not that russia particularly feels it is necessarily in an arms race with the united states, but you had here the defense minister sergey speaking to parliament arians
russia. $54 billion would be just a 10% spike for the pentagon, but it s more than the entire defense budget in moscow. now, generals there asking the kremlin for more cash. cnn s diplomatic editor nic robertson live in moscow. nic, what s the russian reaction here? reporter: dave, the perspective from here is certainly for the generals and russian military, for the last few years they have been going through a massive overhaul and spending more an new tanks and aircraft and on new cruise missile systems so what we had last week in the state duma, the parliament, you had the defense minister standing up in front of all the parliamentarians asking for another $200 billion to help fund the military over the next few years. he had a commitment of about 200 billion from the finance minister, but he wants double that, so there a right n there s a tussle betwe the finance minister, the defense ministryo get that extra money for the military so when