[benj111]

A russian soldier is paid less than an American. A russian factory worker making military equipment is paid less than their American counterpart, leading to lower cost of that equipment. I don't see a problem describing that difference as ppp.

[tomatotomato37]

What a soldier or worker is paid only matters in a vacuum, you have to consider the pipeline from military budget to the actual good or service. That includes both commodities bought on the world market (E.G. steel) and corruption raising costs for the same good (which is a problem for both the US's military-industrial complex and Russia's oligarchy).

That being said though when the budgets are off by an order of magnitude there's no way to make that back just via lowering wages a bit

[benj111]

What's the cost of commodities in building a tank? Yeah fine both an Abrams and a t90 have a few tonnes of steel in it. That doesn't account for a fraction of the final cost though.

Maintenance requires labour. Labour has different prices in different countries. You can compare that labour cost.