The little problem with this claim is that it would be treason to do that. I'm not saying it in the rhetorical sense, but in the get-put-in-jail-for-a-long-time sense. That's a pretty big risk for a businessman to take when it really doesn't matter. There's plenty of fish in the government ocean.

Just to add to that - Russian people in general are extremely proud of their country's military power; most large Russian towns will have regular military parades, parks with military hardware for people to take their photo with, retired missiles and jet fighters on display beside main roads and so on. Spending a large portion of their GDP on their armed forces isn't seen as a frivolity or opposed by anything but a tiny minority of Russian citizens.