On 7 September the government published the instructions Mikhail Mishustin issued after his meeting with the Federation Council's chamber council. Four are addressed to Minfin, all on regional budgets. The first deadline is 1 October. That instruction covers two issues: fixed rates when regions borrow from commercial banks, and a mechanism to control that borrowing. The second is not about the cost of debt. It is about the decision to take it on.
The instruction, in the government's words
“Thus, by 1 October 2026 Minfin is to examine the Federation Council's proposals on applying fixed rates to commercial-bank lending to regions and municipalities, as well as on introducing a mechanism to control commercial lending to constituent entities and the repayment of such loans.”
The proposals are the Federation Council's, not the ministry's. The instruction is to examine them, not to adopt them. The deadline is for a response, and the text does not prescribe that response.
The second half is the one that changes something
A fixed rate on a commercial loan does not make the loan cheaper by itself. Regional borrowing is priced off the key rate, so a floating rate puts the interest-rate risk on the borrower. Fixing the rate shifts that risk to the bank, or to whoever compensates it. The page identifies neither and does not say whether fixed rates would apply to new or outstanding loans. Why fixed rates are being proposed is not on the page. Who proposes them is: the Federation Council, the chamber that seats the regions, asking that the borrower's side of that risk be fixed.
The control mechanism is a different kind of instrument. Commercial credit is the part of regional debt that a region raises on its own, without asking Moscow. The instruction would put that borrowing, and the repayment of it, under a mechanism of control. What such a mechanism would consist of is not on the page, and between a duty to report and a power to refuse the range is wide. The subject is settled where the strength is not: this half is about the decision, not its price. On 19 August, reporting Putin's order for five-year financial recovery programmes, we cited Kommersant's figure that commercial loans made up a third of regional debt as of 1 August. It is a secondary source that we did not verify against a ministry file, and it remains the only available order of magnitude. The instruction concerns that third.
Set beside the other measures this year, the direction is consistent. Two thirds of budget-loan debt is being written off, and since 28 August the money freed can go straight into war spending. From 1 September every region can borrow from the Federal Treasury at 0.1% for up to a month. Each measure replaces a market decision with an administrative one, and each is presented as support. Control over commercial borrowing would be another step in the same direction, but without funding.
Three more instructions to Minfin, all about regions
By 1 November, jointly with the Federation Council, Minfin is to consider expanding the list of documents submitted to the Federation Council and the State Duma alongside the bill on federal budget execution — “including information on the state of regional budgets”. That package does not contain the information now. Our regional balance indicator fills that gap from other files. The instruction is an admission by the government that the annual federal budget accounts say nothing about the budgets below it.
Together with the Federal Antimonopoly Service, Minfin is to report by 1 December on the Federation Council's proposals to centralise state and municipal procurement “to raise quality and ensure the efficiency of spending from regional and local budgets”. Centralised procurement is another decision shifted up a level.
Together with the Ministry of Economic Development, also by 1 December, Minfin is to assess the effectiveness of forums funded from federal and regional budgets and propose ways to optimise them. This is the smallest of the four instructions and the only one about cutting a cost rather than controlling a decision.
The same evening, one region
Hours after the instructions appeared, Minfin published a note on Anton Siluanov's working meeting with Valentin Konovalov, head of the Republic of Khakassia. It says particular attention was paid to balancing the republic's budget and to “implementing the programme to restore regional finances” — the type of programme Putin ordered on 19 August.
The figures in it show the proportions. For 2026 the federal budget provides Khakassia with more than 7.3 bn roubles in grants and over 10 bn roubles in targeted interbudget transfers. Against that:
“In addition, under the programme writing off two thirds of the debt of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation on budget loans issued earlier, in 2025–2026 more than 2.3 bn roubles were written off for Khakassia. The freed-up money has been directed to projects in housing and utilities, and also to solving priority state tasks in the region.”
More than 17 bn roubles of federal money in one year, against 2.3 bn of debt forgiven over two. Debt relief is the smaller source of support for this budget; transfers are the larger one. The note never says what the priority state tasks are.
We treat this as a case, not a measurement. It is a ministry release about a single region, published on the same day as the instructions. It shows what the framework looks like in practice.
What this changes in our model
Nothing today. Our regional budget indicator measures a rolling twelve-month consolidated deficit of 1.616 trn roubles through July and scores 28 out of 100. An instruction to examine a proposal is not a mechanism. The deadline is for an answer, not for a measure: the page gives no date on which anything would take effect, and the government has not said that either proposal would be adopted.
The instruction does tell us where to look. If the control mechanism is introduced, the number to watch is not the deficit but the debt structure: how much regions borrow commercially, at what price and with whose permission. On 3 September we showed that the regional surplus behind the headline belongs to two constituent entities; the rest of the country does not share it. A borrowing rule written for the average of that distribution would be written for a region that does not exist.
What we do not know
The instruction list has neither a date nor a number on the page. It gives only the date of the meeting, 29 June, and the publication date, 7 September. What happened to the instructions during the ten intervening weeks is not stated, and we found no full list published as a separate document.
What was published is also incomplete. The page names Rosstat, the ministries of natural resources, agriculture, industry and trade and construction, and the emergencies ministry as addressees, but contains no paragraph about any of them. The account is therefore incomplete by its own terms. What Rosstat was instructed to do — the instruction we would most want to read in a package about budget reporting — is not on the page.
On the substance, we do not know whether a fixed rate would cover new or existing loans, who would compensate banks for the difference, what the control mechanism would consist of, or whether it would be binding or merely informational. The Khakassia note does not say how many regions are in a financial recovery programme or what criteria determine entry. Nor does it give the size of Khakassia's own budget deficit and debt.