On 14 October the Russian government signed two orders, published a day later, that take money budgeted under the National Defence section and direct it to agencies outside the Defence Ministry. Order No. 2908-r sends 3,836,077.4 thousand roubles — 3.84 billion — to the Interior Ministry for social guarantees to police officers, and its final words say part of that money repays what is already owed. Order No. 2911-r, signed the same day, sends up to 371,525.4 thousand roubles from the same budget line to the Investigative Committee. We read both single-page orders in the official publication.
“…to direct in 2026 to the MVD of Russia budget appropriations provided to the Minfin of Russia under the subsection ‘Other questions in the area of national defence’ of the section ‘National Defence’ of the classification of budget expenditures, in the amount of 3,836,077.4 thousand roubles for the purpose of providing social guarantees to officers of the internal affairs bodies of the Russian Federation, having in view the payment of monetary compensation in place of items of personal-use clothing allowance due under supply norms and of the one-off benefit on dismissal from service in the internal affairs bodies of the Russian Federation, including for the repayment of accounts payable.”
What the money pays for
The order names two purposes: cash compensation that officers receive in place of the uniform items they are entitled to under supply norms, and the one-off benefit paid on dismissal from service. Neither is new spending the government chose to add — both are standing obligations under the police-service social-guarantee rules. The order’s closing clause, “including for the repayment of accounts payable”, says that some of these payments have already become owed on the books and not been made. An accounts payable records an obligation incurred and unpaid; whether any deadline has passed, and how long the debt has stood, the order does not say — it names neither the size of the payable nor the period it accumulated over.
The second order, one-tenth the size
Order No. 2911-r directs up to 371,525.4 thousand roubles — a ceiling, where the MVD’s sum is exact — to the Investigative Committee “for the purpose of financial support of expenses in connection with the increase in the staff numbers of the military investigative organs”. How many positions were added, the order does not say. The military investigative organs are the branch of the committee that handles cases involving servicemen — a staff that grows as the army’s authorised strength grows: three increases totalling 49,860 positions so far this year, each with an instruction to the government to fund it.
Together the two orders direct up to 4,207,602.8 thousand roubles — 4.21 billion — out of the National Defence reserve in one day, and neither order names the Defence Ministry.
The mechanism: a reserve spent by order
Both orders rest on point 8 of part 1 of article 21 of the 2026 federal budget law. The construction is visible in the orders’ own wording: the appropriations sit in the National Defence section but are provided to Minfin, not to any spending agency — a reserve — and the cited provision lets the government direct them to a specific agency by an order, without amending the budget law and without a vote in the Duma. How much the law reserved to Minfin under “Other questions in the area of national defence”, and how much of it has been drawn this year, we could not check: the annex with the departmental structure of expenditures is on the Duma’s legislative portal, which has been unreachable from our environment for weeks.
Next year’s draft budget is built the same way, one size up. Our piece on the 2027 draft found that its article 21 lists the reserved appropriations the government may distribute by changes to the spending schedule; one point alone carries 153.8 billion roubles for decisions of the president and the government across national defence and security, with the annexes that break it down marked secret.
Why this is about the ability to pay for the war
A reserve inside the National Defence section paying the police’s accrued benefit bills shows two things at once. First, the obligations came before the money: the compensation and severance entitlements became owed on the books, and only then — in October of the budget year — did an order find the funds to cover them. Second, the source that closed the gap is the defence reserve, not the Interior Ministry’s own budget. The sums are small against the section: the National Defence chapter’s 2026 allocation is 12,121.0 billion roubles, so the two orders move 0.03% of it. What matters is not the scale but the visibility: a redistribution by order changes no total a reader of the budget law can see, and the payment queue inside the section — who waits, and whose bills are settled from the reserve — surfaces only when an order like this is published. How Russia finances the war sets out where such obligations end up when revenue does not keep pace.
What this changes in our model
Today — nothing. The orders redistribute appropriations already in the 2026 law, so no number our indicators read has moved, and the event’s direction for the budget deficit is neutral. The deficit indicator stands at 66 of 100: the rolling twelve-month deficit through September is 7,342 billion roubles, or 3.2% of GDP. The strength index stands at 46 of 100, in the stress zone; all eight indicators are on the monitor.