What the deficit is, and what it is not
The federal budget deficit is the gap between what the federal government spends and what it collects over a period. It is a flow, not a stock. It tells you how much new financing a period needs; it does not tell you how much the state already owes or how much it has saved. Those are separate numbers, and this monitor reads savings directly through the liquid National Wealth Fund.
The figure covers the federal budget only. Russia's regions run budgets of their own, and their combined balance is a separate indicator here, the regional budget balance. Nor does the deficit say anything about what the money was spent on. It is the size of the gap, not its composition, and the monitor does not measure military spending directly.
Where the figures come from
The finance ministry publishes federal budget execution every month in its federal budget data. Revenue, spending and the balance are all reported as totals from the start of the year: the July figure covers January to July. The monitor turns those totals into single months, adds up the latest twelve and divides the result by GDP.
The same monthly execution file supplies the pre-war reference point. In 2021, the last full year before the invasion, the federal budget ended with a surplus of ₽524.3 billion. As a share of GDP that is 0.34%, with GDP derived from the ministry's National Wealth Fund file.
Why a rolling year instead of January-to-date
Russian government spending is heavily concentrated at the end of the year, in December. A balance counted from January therefore flatters the spring and summer months: much of the year's spending has not happened yet. Revenue is uneven too. One of the large oil taxes falls due only quarterly, and dividends on the shares the state holds through the National Wealth Fund arrive once a year. In August 2026, for example, the federal budget received ₽504.4 billion of such income in a single month; 84.3% of it was Sberbank's dividend, as we reported from the ministry's statement.
A twelve-month window contains each season exactly once, so these effects are counted once rather than mistaken for a trend. The price is that the rolling figure and the calendar-year figure differ for the same month. They must not be mixed: a rolling-year total belongs with the rolling-year share of GDP, and a January-to-date total with its own share. The ministry's own release gives the January-to-date figure; the number on this monitor is always the rolling year.
The pre-war anchor is a surplus, not zero
When the monitor was first registered, 100 on the deficit scale meant a balanced budget: a judgment about what “normal” looks like. On 22 August 2026 that anchor was replaced with what actually happened, the 2021 surplus of 0.34% of GDP, so that the deficit is measured against a recorded pre-war fact like every other indicator. The change and its reasoning are dated in the amendment record.
The trouble line did not move: it sits at a deficit of 10% of GDP, far beyond anything the war has produced so far. Between the two anchors the score is linear, and it can run past either end.
Why the deficit never triggers a verdict
The monitor sorts its indicators into classes by how easily the state can shape them. The deficit is a ratio that policy choices move directly, so it sits in class 3: prices and ratios. A tax change, a spending freeze or a payment pushed into the next quarter can all move it without any change in the underlying strain. Class-3 readings confirm what other indicators show, but they never trigger a verdict. Oil and gas revenue and the liquid reserve fund, both class 2, can trigger only in a pair: two class-2 indicators firing at once.
How the gap is covered
Every rouble of deficit has to come from somewhere. The ordinary source is domestic borrowing through OFZ bonds, sold at the finance ministry's auctions. Two details matter when borrowing figures are set against the deficit.
First, the borrowing programme counts bonds at face value, while the budget receives what buyers actually pay. When bonds sell below par, the cash is smaller than the headline. From the start of 2026 through 3 September, the ministry's own auction table showed ₽450.0 billion between the two, as our reading of that table set out.
Second, an auction can place well because state banks are pressed to buy. Borrowing then looks healthy while the deficit is, in effect, financed with new money, which is why the monitor watches money growth rather than auction results for that signal. What borrowing does not cover can be paid from the liquid part of the National Wealth Fund.
The deficit in forecasts is often a different number
Plans and forecasts often use other definitions. The central bank's draft guidelines for 2027–2029, published on 31 August 2026, work with the structural primary deficit. That figure is adjusted for swings in oil and gas prices, excludes interest payments and is forecast rather than observed. The bank assumed 2% of GDP in 2026, falling to zero in 2029. It cannot be set beside the rolling deficit on this monitor, because the two measure different things. The deficit written into the budget law is different again: a plan, not an outturn.
What the number cannot tell you
A wider deficit is not a countdown. The balance moves with both revenue and spending, and some of those moves are timing rather than substance. When companies are allowed to pay taxes later, as Minfin proposed in August 2026 for businesses hit by drone attacks, the revenue arrives in later months rather than disappearing; our account of that deferral explains the distinction.
Nor can the deficit say whether its financing will hold. That depends on whether borrowing, the reserve fund or new money pays for it; the last two each have their own reading on the monitor, and the guide to how Russia finances the war follows the whole chain, from oil revenue to prices.
Reading the live figure
Under this guide sits the most recent rolling twelve-month deficit as a share of GDP, with its score: 100 is the 2021 surplus, 0 a deficit of 10% of GDP. A new month of budget execution from the ministry moves it.