Russia's federal budget deficit is the gap between what the government spends and what it collects. The monitor treats it as the burn rate: the size of that gap over the latest twelve months, measured as a share of GDP.
Why it's a rolling twelve months, not a monthly print
The finance ministry publishes the federal balance cumulatively from the start of each calendar year, the same way it publishes oil and gas revenue. The monitor de-cumulates the published totals, sums the most recent twelve months and divides by GDP. The result is a rolling-year measure rather than the calendar-year total usually quoted from the ministry's report.
Where the anchors come from
The indicator is scored against two registered points. 100 marks 2021's outturn — a small surplus of 0.34% of GDP, the last full year before the war. 0 marks a deficit of 10% of GDP, a level well outside anything the war has produced. Both anchors were fixed before the monitor started scoring data, and neither moves in response to a reading — the reasoning is set out on the methodology page.
How the gap gets covered
A widening deficit does not stay abstract for long. The ordinary way to close it is domestic borrowing — selling OFZ bonds. When those auctions do not place enough, the money comes from the liquid National Wealth Fund instead, and coerced bank purchases can make borrowing look healthy while monetizing the deficit — which is what the M2 indicator is built to catch. The deficit measures the financing need; the other indicators show where the strain appears as that need is met.
What a widening deficit does not mean
A faster burn rate is not a countdown to a specific date. It is one reading, among eight, of how much pressure the system is under — the point of the monitor is watching all eight together rather than reading any single number as a verdict on its own.