On 13 October Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug — Yugra published law No. 63-oz of 9 October 2026, adopted by the okrug Duma on 8 October. It is 1,576 pages, scanned without a text layer; in this session we read pages 1–3, 8 and 1443–1447 as images. Article 1 is five lines long and does the whole of the work:
“in subparagraph 1 the figures ‘419,500,668.8’ shall be replaced by the figures ‘411,286,571.6’; in subparagraph 2 the figures ‘476,684,662.1’ shall be replaced by the figures ‘505,808,418.2’; in subparagraph 3 the figures ‘57,183,993.3’ shall be replaced by the figures ‘94,521,846.6’; in subparagraph 4 the figures ‘110,527,184.1’ shall be replaced by the figures ‘147,927,184.2’; in subparagraph 5 the figures ‘9,335,490.6’ shall be replaced by the figures ‘10,785,490.6’”
In thousands of roubles. Revenue for 2026 falls by 8.21 billion, spending rises by 29.12 billion, and the deficit goes from 57.18 to 94.52 billion roubles — up 65.3%. The two movements account for the third exactly: 8,214,097.2 plus 29,123,756.1 is 37,337,853.3, which is the increase in the deficit to the last decimal. Both editions close as identities — 411,286,571.6 minus 505,808,418.2 is −94,521,846.6 — so the lines can be read off the amendment without the consolidated text of the law it amends, which we could not obtain.
Measured against the okrug’s own revenue, the gap goes from 13.6% to 23.0%.
This is Russia’s main oil-producing region and a historic net contributor to the federal budget — one of the handful of places the arrangement in which regions manage on their own is actually built on. Annex 1, at page 8, puts the okrug’s tax and non-tax revenue for 2026 at 367,344,395.2 thousand roubles: 122,705,234.0 of profit tax and 95,387,793.5 of personal income tax, 218,093,027.5 together, or 53% of total revenue. The mineral-extraction tax and the export duty that make up federal oil and gas revenue are federal taxes, so this law does not touch that line.
Where the 94.5 billion comes from
The answer is in the new edition of the annex on internal sources of financing, at page 1445:
“Internal sources of financing of budget deficits — 94,521,846.6; State securities of constituent entities of the Russian Federation, the nominal value of which is denominated in the currency of the Russian Federation — 26,999,999.7; Credits of credit institutions raised by constituent entities of the Russian Federation in the currency of the Russian Federation — 61,900,000.0”
The five lines of the table sum to the total exactly. Set out in full, in thousands of roubles as the document gives them:
| source | 2026 |
|---|---|
| bonds of the okrug | 26,999,999.7 |
| credits from banks | 61,900,000.0 |
| budget credits from other budgets | 48,987.7 |
| change in cash balances | 3,196,244.9 |
| other sources | 2,376,614.3 |
| total | 94,521,846.6 |
88.90 billion of the 94.52 — 94.1% — is raised on the market. The cushion contributes 3.20 billion, or 3.4%. Budget credits from other budgets contribute 48,987.7 thousand roubles, which is 0.05% and is best read as a rounding line rather than as support.
The “other sources” line is worth opening. Page 1446 breaks it into 2,575,314.3 thousand roubles of “shares and other forms of participation in capital owned by constituent entities of the Russian Federation” — the okrug selling equity it holds — less 198,700.0 lent onward to other budgets. A region that is selling stakes to help close a gap is not drawing on a cushion either.
The borrowing is pre-authorised in the same five lines of article 1. The ceiling on the okrug’s state internal debt at 1 January 2027 rises from 110.53 to 147.93 billion roubles. That is an increase of 37,400,000.1 thousand roubles against an increase in the deficit of 37,337,853.3 — the headroom is granted to within 62 million of the money it is there to cover. The ceiling on debt from state guarantees for 2026 goes up too, from 9.34 to 10.79 billion.
Nor is it only this year. The replacement annex for the planning period, at page 1447, puts financing sources at 41,935,242.7 thousand roubles for 2027 — of which 24.00 billion in bonds and 11.90 billion in bank credit — and 22,473,028.8 for 2028, of which 17.00 billion in bonds. Borrowing taken on now becomes a debt-service line in those years: part of the revenue the okrug is planning for has already been spent.
What the region takes back from its towns
Article 5 of the budget law is amended in eleven places, and the amendments are bare totals with no labels attached. They can still be identified, because they sum. The four categories of transfer to the okrug’s municipalities — 11,104,784.8 plus 95,272,009.5 plus 47,772,737.8 plus 2,882,734.3 — come to 157,032,266.4, which is precisely the figure the law replaces with 154,744,768.5. The new values sum to the new total just as exactly.
So, for 2026, transfers from the okrug to its own municipalities fall by 2,287,497.9 thousand roubles, or 1.46%:
| transfer | change |
|---|---|
| equalisation grants | +333.6 mn |
| subventions for delegated powers | −1,152.5 mn |
| subsidies for co-financing | −1,446.9 mn |
| other transfers | −21.7 mn |
The largest cut falls on subsidies — the money municipalities co-finance their own projects with. Equalisation grants, the unconditional line that keeps towns solvent, go up. The okrug is protecting the floor and cutting the ceiling, in the same document in which it adds 29.12 billion to its own spending and 37.34 billion to its deficit.
One smaller line from the same article is labelled in full, and is worth recording. A new subparagraph 3.1 commits 50,000.0 thousand roubles in 2026 to the budget of Kursk oblast, to co-finance the reconstruction of the memorial complex “To the memory of those who fell in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945” in the city of Kursk — one region paying for an object in another.
What this means for the series we track
We measure the consolidated regional budget balance as a rolling twelve-month total for all of Russia’s regions together. It stands at a deficit of 1.466 trillion roubles, scoring 33 of 100 against a pre-war anchor of a 0.661 trillion surplus at the end of 2021 and a registered trouble line at a 2.5 trillion deficit. Our guide to regional budgets explains how the series is built and why regional gaps tend to reach the federal budget anyway. This law moves none of it: no reading changed in this morning’s run, and the strength index is 46.3 of 100, in the stress zone.
What the law adds is the view from the strong end of the distribution. Over the past three weeks the centre has deferred 300 billion roubles of regional budget-credit repayments to beyond 2030, replaced the indexation and no-cut guarantees on equalisation grants with a floor of 90%, written off 2.81 billion of Belgorod’s budget-credit debt against what the region had paid to war participants, and priced the shelling damage to Belgorod’s power grid out of the reserve fund. Those are all measures for regions in difficulty. Khanty-Mansi is not one of them. It is the region the arrangement assumes will not need anything — and it has just gone to the bond market and the banks for 88.9 billion roubles in a single amendment, while trimming what it sends its own towns.
What we do not know
Where the 8.21 billion of revenue went. The law gives a new edition of the revenue annex in full, but no deltas, and the consolidated text of law No. 87-oz is not available to us: minfin.gov.ru has been blocking our environment for a third day, and we did not reach the okrug’s own portal. Which revenue lines fell is not established.
What the extra 29.12 billion buys. More than 1,500 pages of annexes set out the spending by department and programme. We did not read them, and the amendment states no totals by section.
Whether the borrowing has been placed. The law authorises bonds and bank credit and raises the ceiling to match. It is not a record of money raised. Whether 27 billion of okrug paper has found buyers, and at what yield, is not in this document.
What the article 5 labels formally are. We identified the four transfer categories from the original law’s final table and confirmed them by the sums closing on both the old and the new totals. That is strong evidence, not the consolidated text, which we could not read.
That this is the first amendment of 2026 rests on two indications rather than a register. The law’s own citation line names only the original publication of 2025, which in Russian drafting practice means no prior amendments; and a search of the official publication registry at publication.pravo.gov.ru returns no other law amending the 2026 okrug budget between 1 December 2025 and this one. Both point the same way; neither is the register itself.