On 15 October the Russian government signed Decree No. 1350, published a day later, which adds a section the treasury-support rules — approved by Decree No. 2024 of 24 November 2021 — did not have: a standing procedure for taking an unreturned advance on a terminated state contract straight off the supplier’s account. The Federal Treasury transfers the money by its own order, on the state customer’s request, no later than the second working day after a documents check. The decree takes effect on 1 January 2027. We read all four pages of the published text.
“When treasury support is provided, in the case where, upon termination of a state contract… the source of financial support of which are funds provided from the federal budget — by agreement of the parties, by a court decision, or in the case of a unilateral refusal of a party… to perform it, including in connection with the introduction of procedures applied in a case of insolvency (bankruptcy) of the supplier (contractor, performer) — the return of the advance… has not been carried out by the supplier (contractor, performer) under the state contract, the state customer shall send to the territorial organ of the Federal Treasury… a request for the return of the said advance (balance of the advance).”
Two working days and three grounds to refuse
The new section VI of the rules runs on a tight clock. The customer files its request through the Electronic Budget system, attaching copies of the documents that ended the contract — the termination agreement, a court decision in force, or the decision on a unilateral refusal. No later than the next working day, the Treasury’s territorial organ checks the request against a list of seven items: the details of the contract and of the document that terminated it, the contract’s identifier, the supplier’s name, the order under which the advance was paid and its sum, the account details for the transfer, the sum to be returned, and — where an independent guarantee secured the contract — whether the guarantor has paid on the customer’s demand, and how much. Responsibility for the accuracy of all of it rests with the customer, and where the contract sits in the contracts register, the Treasury also checks that the termination documents are in the unified procurement information system.
Then the money moves. No later than the second working day after the check, the Treasury transfers the advance by an order it draws up itself, “within the balance of funds recorded on the analytical section opened on the supplier’s personal account”: into federal budget revenue, if the advance was paid in a past financial year and federal laws do not provide otherwise, or back onto the customer’s account, if it was paid this year. The Treasury may refuse on exactly three grounds — the request does not conform to the list, the termination documents are not in the procurement system, or there is no money on the account. The section assigns the supplier no step in the procedure it creates: the company whose account is debited appears in the text as the account’s name, not as a party whose consent or objection has a place in the sequence.
Money that never leaves the state’s sight
Treasury support is the regime under which money paid out on designated federal contracts does not go to the contractor’s bank: it sits on a personal account opened at the Federal Treasury, and payments from it are controlled against the contract. An advance under this regime is the state financing the work before it is done — and the account it sits on is one the state itself administers. What section VI adds is the return leg: when the contract dies, what remains of the advance can now be collected by the administrator of the account, without asking the account’s owner. The limit is in the same sentence — “within the balance of funds”. The Treasury takes what is still there; the case where nothing is left is covered by the third ground for refusal, not by any recovery mechanism. Money already spent on subcontractors, wages or materials is beyond this procedure’s reach.
The bankruptcy clause
The clause worth reading twice sits in the definition of the case itself: termination “including in connection with the introduction of procedures applied in a case of insolvency (bankruptcy) of the supplier (contractor, performer)”. The rules are standing rules, not a one-off decision, and the situation they now anticipate by name is a state contractor that goes into insolvency with a federal advance on its account. What the decree does not do is also visible: it does not amend the insolvency law, and it does not say how a debit executed by the Treasury’s own order relates to the queue of the company’s other creditors, whom bankruptcy law normally lines up over exactly such assets. The text leaves the two regimes side by side without a bridge.
Why this is about the ability to pay for the war
The decree carries no sums — not the volume of advances outstanding, not the share that terminated contracts leave unreturned, not an estimate of what the procedure will recover. The Treasury’s own reporting and the Audit Chamber’s materials, where such figures might live, were unreachable from our environment, so the scale cannot be bounded from here: unpriced is not the same as small. What the document itself establishes is direction. A state that pays for work upfront has written a permanent, two-working-day, no-consent procedure for getting the unspent remainder back the moment a contract fails — and has named its counterparties’ bankruptcy, in the rule’s first sentence, as one of the ways a contract fails. A procedure is written for a case the writer expects to see again. From 2027 the federal budget intends to count, and collect, every unworked advance.
Our overdue-receivables indicator measures a neighbouring thing, not this one: Rosstat’s series counts the bills Russian organisations have not paid each other, and an advance owed back to the state is not in it. The trace this story would leave in that series is second-hand — a contractor that cannot return a federal advance is a contractor whose own suppliers are likely waiting too. The nearest payment-flow evidence we have read points the same way: incoming payments to state-demand industries have now fallen for a third quarter running. What overdue receivables are — and what they are not — is set out in the guide.
What this changes in our model
Nothing today. The decree takes effect on 1 January 2027, and no number any of our indicators read has moved. Overdue receivables remain the weakest reading we carry: Rosstat’s operative figure for the end of July is 9,090.1 billion roubles overdue, which is 1.96 times the January 2022 level in real terms, scoring 4 of 100 against the pre-war anchor of 1× and a registered trouble line at 2×. The strength index stands at 46 of 100, in the stress zone; all eight indicators are on the monitor.
What we do not know
Any number. The decree names no sums, and the reporting that would price the stock of unreturned advances — the Treasury’s own accounts, the Audit Chamber’s audits — we could not reach.
Whether defence contracts are covered. The rules apply to treasury support of contracts financed from the federal budget; the state defence order runs under its own support regime, and the decree neither names it nor excludes it.
What the return route was until now. The amendment’s own wording shows section VI is new to these rules; whether some other act already gave customers a non-judicial route to an advance, we could not verify — the consolidated text of the 2021 rules is behind unreachable services.
How the debit meets the creditor queue. For a supplier in insolvency, bankruptcy law marshals the estate for all creditors; this procedure moves money off the personal account by the Treasury’s order. Which rule yields, the decree does not say.