According to sources for the Open Nizhny portal in regional authorities, as budgets for 2027 are being prepared, this trend may affect 60–65 of the 89 constituent entities of the Russian Federation; this statistic includes 83 regions and six more occupied territories of Ukraine, which Russia calls its own. The regions are moving from piecemeal savings to a systemic review of spending: investment programs, costs for building social facilities, and urban improvement are being cut.
In Leningrad Oblast, the budget deficit for 2027 is planned at 3.95%, while St. Petersburg has already cut this year’s spending by about 71 billion rubles. Similar processes are underway in Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Vologda, Smolensk, and Murmansk. The combined deficit of regional budgets in 2026, according to the portal’s estimate, will remain at 1.3 trillion rubles, or 0.6% of GDP, and for 2027 the Ministry of Finance has set a deficit of 959 billion rubles, or 0.4% of GDP.
Vadim Kovrigin, an associate professor at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, says the problem lies not so much in the deficit itself as in the way it is covered. Protected items remain public-sector wages and social benefits, so capital expenditures are the first to be cut. “This is the least painful saving today and the most problematic and expensive tomorrow: a clinic renovation postponed in 2027 will cost much more three years later, and an unfinished school by 2030 will mean a second shift”, he said.
Vladimir Klimanov, director of the Center for Regional Policy at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), notes that the deficit that emerged in most regions by mid-2026 is forcing authorities to sharply cut spending because the ability to increase revenues is limited. According to him, spending restructuring plans have already been prepared by most regions, but their launch was delayed until after the elections in September 2026. Klimanov also points out that among them were previously successful donor regions that had not received additional help from the federal budget before. At the same time, the 2027 budget allocates a record 35% of all spending — 17.147 trillion rubles — to the war against Ukraine.
According to calculations by Janis Kluge of the German Institute for International Security Affairs, over less than five years of war, 58.3 trillion rubles ($692 billion) were spent on these purposes. In his estimate, spending amounted to 6.818 trillion rubles in the first year of the invasion, 9.835 trillion in the second, 14.336 trillion in 2024, 16.687 trillion in 2025, and 10.687 trillion in the first half of 2026.
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