On 14 October Rostov oblast published law No. 517-ZS — adopted by the Legislative Assembly, signed by the governor and published all on the same day, in force on publication. It is 1,126 pages, scanned without a text layer; in this session we read pages 1–7 and 1126 as images, together with the budget law it amends and all three earlier amendments. Article 1 replaces three figures:
“in point 2 the figures ‘363,547,903.6’ shall be replaced by the figures ‘373,935,292.8’; in point 3 the figures ‘67,150,166.3’ shall be replaced by the figures ‘77,537,555.5’; in point 5 the figures ‘31,501,889.3’ shall be replaced by the figures ‘41,889,278.5’”
In thousands of roubles. Point 2 is spending for 2026: up by 10,387,389.2 thousand roubles. Point 5 is the deficit: up by the same 10,387,389.2, from 31.50 to 41.89 billion roubles — 33.0% in one act. Point 3 is the ceiling on the oblast’s state internal debt at 1 January 2027: up by the same figure again, to 77,537,555.5. Revenue is not touched anywhere in the law — it stays at 332,046,014.3 thousand roubles, where the July amendment set it — so every rouble of new spending goes into the gap, and the right to borrow is enlarged by the same rouble. Measured against the oblast’s own revenue, the deficit goes from 9.5% to 12.6%.
The third raise of the year
The budget Rostov adopted on 23 December 2025 planned a deficit of 26,918,503.0 thousand roubles. This law is the fourth amendment to it, and the third to raise the deficit:
| law | date | deficit | change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 394-ZS, the budget as adopted | 23 Dec 2025 | 26,918,503.0 | — |
| 431-ZS | 18 Mar 2026 | 29,501,889.3 | +9.6% |
| 491-ZS | 16 Jul 2026 | unchanged | — |
| 512-ZS | 18 Sep 2026 | 31,501,889.3 | +6.8% |
| 517-ZS | 14 Oct 2026 | 41,889,278.5 | +33.0% |
From the adopted budget the deficit has grown 55.6% in under ten months, and the October step is more than twice the two earlier raises put together. The July amendment — the one that left the deficit alone — raised revenue and spending by the same 3,834,963.6 and actually lowered both the debt ceiling and the cost of serving the debt; March had nearly doubled that service line, from 1,795,065.7 in the adopted budget to 3,417,706.9. We fetched all five laws from the official publication portal and read the amending articles of each; the portal’s registry for the oblast lists no other act amending this budget.
Where the 41.9 billion comes from
The law restates annex 2 — the sources financing the deficit — in full. Its first substantive line:
“Placement of state (municipal) securities, the nominal value of which is denominated in the currency of the Russian Federation — 15,000,000.0”
Set out in full, in thousands of roubles as the document gives them:
| source | 2026 |
|---|---|
| oblast bonds (nothing redeemed in 2026) | 15,000,000.0 |
| credits from banks, net | 25,095,030.6 |
| budget credits from other budgets, net | −2,308,277.2 |
| change in cash balances | 3,933,509.0 |
| other sources | 169,016.1 |
| total | 41,889,278.5 |
The five lines sum to the total exactly. 40,095,030.6 of the 41,889,278.5 — 95.7% — is bonds and bank credit. Cash balances contribute 9.4%. The budget-credit line is negative: in 2026 the oblast repays 2,308,277.2 thousand roubles more in credits from other budgets of the budget system than it receives. The gross figures behind that line are mostly a loop — of the 28,112,758.0 to be drawn, 27,670,501.0 are treasury credits for topping up the single budget account, and the same 27,670,501.0 stands in the repayment lines, money borrowed and returned within the year. Strip the loop out, and new budget credit to Rostov in 2026 is 442,257.0 drawn against 2,750,534.2 repaid.
The September edition of the same annex, restated by law No. 512-ZS a month earlier, shows where this month’s money comes from. The bond line is identical in both editions: 15,000,000.0 placed, nothing redeemed. The budget-credit line is identical too. What moves is net bank credit: from 14,707,641.4 to 25,095,030.6 — an increase of 10,387,389.2 to the last decimal, the deficit increase itself. The gross programme behind it grows from 88,245,848.4 of credit to be drawn within the year to 150,570,183.6.
The planned years are already paying for it
The same article 1 rewrites 2027 and 2028, and the rewriting closes as an identity. The “conditionally approved” expenses — the unallocated reserve a budget law is required to keep for its planned years — are cut by 1,713,919.3 for 2027 and by 1,714,317.0 for 2028. Debt service for those years is raised by exactly those amounts: from 6,084,955.8 to 7,798,875.1, and from 8,262,218.5 to 9,976,535.5. The interest bill on what is being borrowed now is charged, rouble for rouble, against money the oblast had not yet promised to anything.
Debt service for 2027, at 7,798,875.1, is now more than two and a half times the 2026 service line as it stands today. The debt ceilings for the planned years rise by the same 10,387,389.2 as this year’s: to 94,512,730.2 at 1 January 2028 and 108,136,930.1 at 1 January 2029 — 62% above where the adopted budget set the ceiling for the start of 2027. And in the restated annex the planned years’ bonds merely refinance themselves — 5,000,000.0 placed against 5,000,000.0 redeemed in each year — so the net new money there is bank credit again: 18,449,836.4 in 2027 and 14,581,819.4 in 2028.
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. This law moves none of it. In this morning’s run one reading did move — the liquid part of the NWF, at $45.0 billion on 1 October against $46.7 billion a month earlier — and the strength index stands at 46 of 100, in the stress zone.
What the law adds is a second data point in nine days from the strong end of the distribution. Khanty-Mansi, Russia’s main oil-producing region, went to the bond market and the banks for 88.9 billion roubles in a single amendment on 9 October. Rostov — a region whose spending this year is 373.9 billion roubles — now covers a 41.9 billion deficit with 40.1 billion of market debt. Both laws carry the same signature detail: the centre’s budget credit runs the other way. Rostov repays more than it draws in all three years the law covers — net −2,308,277.2 this year, −1,474,661.7 in 2027, −957,619.5 in 2028 — in the same weeks in which the centre deferred 300 billion roubles of budget-credit repayments for regions that cannot pay and replaced the guarantees on equalisation grants with a 90% floor. The regions that can borrow commercially are borrowing commercially; the support instruments are being rebuilt around the ones that cannot.
What we do not know
What the 10.4 billion buys. The 1,126 pages of annexes set out spending by department and programme; we did not read them, and article 1 states no totals by section. Which lines absorb the increase is not established.
Whether the bonds have been placed. The 15,000,000.0 is a placement limit carried unchanged from the September edition, not a record of money raised. Whether oblast paper has found buyers this year, and at what yield, is not in this document.
Why July cut the ceiling. The amendment of 16 July lowered the debt ceiling from 66,708,165.8 to 65,150,166.3 while adding the same 3,834,963.6 to both sides of the budget. We read its article 1 and not its annexes; the reasoning is not on the pages we read.
That no other amendment exists rests on the official publication portal: its registry of the oblast’s acts, read back past the base law of 23 December 2025, contains the four amendments named here and no other act touching this budget. A law adopted but not yet published would not appear there.