230 billion USD is, according to Wikipedia, Russia's annual spending (not just military spending). I can see how that figure could have been interpreted as referring to military spending in the context of my post, but that's not what my post actually said.

The figure of $69 billion overall military spending seems consistent with the 10 billion figure I gave for Russian spending on nuclear weapons.

I got that figure from here: http://www.icanw.org/the-facts/catastrophic-harm/a-diversion... The figures are a bit old and I accidentally used the older of the two. But unless they're way off, it's true that Russia is spending more on nuclear weapons than any country other than the US. It's also spending more than France and the UK combined (France and the UK being the only European countries with a strategic nuclear capability).

Besides all that, the idea that nukes are somehow the cheap option for Russia is pretty nuts when you consider that Russia still maintains a fleet of ballistic missile submarines -- an expensive hobby by anyone's standards. You could pay for lots of conventional weapons with the money spent on that. They're even building shiny new ones: https://thediplomat.com/2017/06/russia-to-launch-its-deadlie...

Russia is about as broke as the Soviets were - nukes are by far the cheapest way of them being considered a major power:

http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/02/news/russia-defense-spending...

Calling them "Upper Volta with Missiles" was a bit harsh - they do spend a larger percentage of their GDP then most European countries but with such a small economy I'm not sure it makes much difference. After all - nobody feels particularly threatened by Canada.... (which has a larger GDP).

>by far the cheapest way of them being considered a major power

Cheap compared to what alternative? It's not clear what you mean by this. They're spending a fat chunk of their military budget on nukes, they're spending far more on nukes than they need to spend just to be a nuclear power (since they're maintaining all three delivery options), and they're spending more on nukes than any other country except the US.

>they do spend a larger percentage of their GDP then most European countries but with such a small economy I'm not sure it makes much difference

Just check the figures. Russia's military budget is a bit higher than the UK or France's. Russia generally ranks 4th or 5th in the world for military expenditure.

>. After all - nobody feels particularly threatened by Canada...

Because Canada doesn't have nukes or anything like the same military budget. You seem to be confusing GDP with the level of military threat posed. They're only loosely related.