On 16 October the government of the Republic of Khakassia signed two decrees, No. 520 and No. 521, published on 19 October. Together they move 106,186,000 roubles between lines of the 2026 republican budget. Neither adds a rouble: each nets to zero. What they do instead is instruct the republic’s finance ministry to rewrite the consolidated budget schedule — the executive document that distributes the money the budget law approved — without going back to that law. Both are scans with no text layer; we read all eleven pages and recomputed both tables.
“The Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Khakassia is to make changes to the consolidated budget schedule of the republican budget of the Republic of Khakassia without making changes to the Law of the Republic of Khakassia of 18.12.2025 No. 94-ZRKh ‘On the republican budget of the Republic of Khakassia for 2026 and for the planning period 2027 and 2028’”.
That sentence is identical in both decrees. Each was signed by Valentin Konovalov, head of the republic and chairman of its government.
The power they used, and where it ends
Both preambles cite the same authority: part 11 of article 15 of federal law No. 431-FZ of 28 November 2025, which sets the special rules for executing budgets in 2026, together with the republic’s own rules under its decree No. 712 of 26 December 2025. We read part 11 in the law’s official publication, a 61-page scan, on pages 44 to 46. It is one sentence. Its grounds run:
“…in the event of a redistribution of budget allocations directed to the financial provision of measures connected with preventing the effects of a deterioration in the geopolitical and economic situation on the development of sectors of the economy, and of additional measures in the sphere of national defence and national security, including the provision of social support measures for particular categories of citizens, as well as measures connected with the elimination of emergency situations of a federal and interregional character and their consequences… and for the purposes determined by the highest executive body of the constituent entity of the Russian Federation (the local administration), and also in the event of a redistribution of budget allocations between types of sources of financing the budget deficit…”
The defence and geopolitics wording comes first, and it is the reason the provision exists. But the list does not stop there. Its last limb before the deficit clause hands the regional government an open category: purposes that the regional government itself determines. A ground defined by the body that uses it is not a limit on that body.
This matters for how the two decrees should be read. Neither names which limb of part 11 it relies on. Every single line of both tables carries the same justification in its own column — “point 2 of the Rules”, meaning the republic’s decree No. 712, which was adopted, in its own title, “on grounds additional to the grounds … established by the budget legislation of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Khakassia”. So we cannot say Khakassia invoked a war ground, and we do not. What we can say is that it did not need one.
Part 12, immediately after, goes further for some regions: a region that is not receiving equalisation grants in the current year may, on the same grounds, amend its schedule in excess of the total expenditure approved by its budget law. Whether Khakassia meets that condition, we did not establish.
Where the money came from, and where it went
Decree No. 521 covers the ministry of education and science. Its table closes with “Total increase in budget allocations 73,289,000”, “Total decrease in budget allocations −73,289,000”, “Total 0”. Both columns reconcile exactly.
Everything added is pay. 46,710,000 roubles go to wages in budget-funded secondary vocational institutions, 21,001,000 to wages in autonomous ones, 4,544,000 to wages in scientific institutions and 1,032,000 to the ministry’s own central apparatus. A further 2,000 roubles go to state support for Khakass State University.
The money comes out of other education lines: 34,389,000 from general education, 32,049,000 from further professional education, 5,214,000 and 1,084,000 from two lines of “other questions in the field of education”, 551,000 from a social-policy line, and 2,000 from measures for the children’s health campaign. Every one of those removals carries the same formula:
“reduction of budget allocations in connection with the economy that has arisen, in the absence of a need for the stated volume of budget funds in the current financial year”.
Decree No. 520 covers the ministry of construction, and moves 32,897,000 roubles each way. Here the largest item is not pay. 23,000,000 roubles go to two children’s polyclinics, each for 200 visits per shift: 5,000,000 to finish building the one in the Arban district of Abakan, and 18,000,000 to fit out the one in Chernogorsk with technological and medical equipment. The rest is running costs — 3,439,000 for the ministry’s central apparatus payroll, 4,523,000 for the staff of its state institutions, 965,000 for fuel and car tyres for the capital construction directorate “in connection with the changeover to the winter season”, and 970,000 for state duty “on the filing of statements of claim”.
The money for it comes off capital projects. 24,000,000 roubles are taken from the construction of a multifunctional cultural and educational centre for children and young people in the village of Bely Yar, 5,455,000 from the residential block of the Abakan veterans’ home, 2,272,000 from the reconstruction of the water supply in the village of Askiz, and 1,170,000 from the execution of court judgments. Three of those four — 31,727,000 roubles — are construction and design.
Added up across both decrees: of the 106,186,000 roubles moved, 81,249,000, or about three-quarters, lands on payroll. The rest is the two polyclinics and small running costs.
Why this is about the ability to pay for the war
The sums here are small. The republic moved about a hundred million roubles, and its budget came out the same size as it went in. Nothing in these two documents makes Khakassia poorer by a single rouble, and nothing in them will show up in any balance we track.
The finding is not the money. It is that a regional government can put a number on a wage bill by naming a purpose for itself, and that the only record of the decision is a decree published three days later. A budget law is a limit set by one body on another. In 2026 the limit still exists on paper — Khakassia’s law No. 94-ZRKh is in force, unamended — while the distribution inside it is rewritten by the body it was supposed to bind. The parliamentary vote that would normally accompany a reallocation of this kind did not happen, and under part 11 it does not have to.
What the composition shows is ordinary cash pressure, not an emergency. The economy formula attached to every removal in decree No. 521 says the money was not needed where it sat. The money was needed for wages in colleges and research institutes, and in the construction ministry’s case it came out of a children’s cultural centre and a veterans’ home. That is what a budget looks like when payroll is the binding constraint and capital projects are the slack — and the list of grounds that permits it opens with the geopolitical situation and ends with the region’s own discretion.
This is not the first time, and that is the more useful finding. The legal portal does have a search by document title, and we used it to count the series. It holds 4,155 acts of this kind, issued by 33 regions and the federal government — what the federal register carries, not a national census. 1,519 of them come from Arkhangelsk region and 570 from Khakassia: 35 in 2020, 14 in 2021, 48 in 2022, 132 in 2023, 125 in 2024, 128 in 2025 and 88 so far in 2026. Nos. 520 and 521 are the 87th and 88th of this year.
We did not take the titles on trust. No. 516 and No. 517, signed on 14 October and published three days before these two, cite the same part 11 and the same decree No. 712, and carry the same closing instruction not to amend law No. 94-ZRKh. We read both. We also read two older ones: No. 25 of 1 February 2021 runs on part 1 of article 9 of federal law No. 327-FZ of 15 October 2020 and the republic’s rules decree No. 15; No. 185 of 14 April 2022 runs on part 26 of article 10 of federal law No. 384-FZ of 29 November 2021 and rules decree No. 144. The construction is the same in every one: a federal law setting special rules for executing budgets that year, a republic decree adding grounds of its own on top, and the line ordering the finance ministry not to touch the budget law. The instrument is not something 2026 introduced. It is an annual fixture, and Khakassia now uses it about twice a week.
We have been tracking the 2026 law since September, when a government decree used part 14 of the same article to stop counting failed state tasks; part 13 of it lets a region’s deficit exceed its own statutory ceiling. Around those sit the write-off of budget-loan debt in return for war-industry spending, treasury credit opened to every region, balance grants presented as healthcare money, a floor under regional grants and the budget rule overridden by 1.5 trillion roubles. The direction has been one way: the rules that constrain regional budgets are being made optional one at a time. What the count adds is that this particular rule has been optional, and used as such, since before the war.
What this changes in our model
Nothing measurable, and that is the point. The consolidated regional budget balance scores 33 out of 100, with a rolling twelve-month reading of −1.466 trillion roubles, against a pre-war anchor of the 2021 surplus of +0.661 trillion and a registered trouble line at −2.5 trillion. A reallocation that nets to zero cannot move that balance, and these decrees net to zero by construction. The strength index stands at 46 out of 100, in the stress zone. No reading moved in today’s data update; all eight are on the monitor, and how the consolidated regional balance is measured is set out in the guide.
What a reader should take from this is a caution about the balance rather than a change in it. The consolidated figure is built from what regions report against approved budgets. A power to re-cut the schedule without amending the law does not alter the total; it alters how much the approved law tells you about where the money actually went.
What we do not know
Whether the whole series runs on this power. We counted the series by title and read six of Khakassia’s decrees in full — Nos. 520, 521, 516 and 517 of this year, and one each from 2021 and 2022. A matching title does not prove that the other 84 of this year’s 88 invoke part 11 rather than an ordinary ground of the Budget Code, and none of the tables names a limb. Reading them is what would settle it.
What each year’s grounds list allowed. The 2021 and 2022 decrees point to their own federal provisions, adopted in October 2020 and November 2021. We did not read those grounds lists, so we cannot say how the open category at the end of the 2026 list compares with what earlier years permitted. The rise in the count from 14 in 2021 to about 130 a year since 2023 is in the register; the reason for it is not something these documents give us.
What is in the republic’s own rules. Decree No. 712 of 26 December 2025 sets the grounds Khakassia added for itself, and every line of both tables is justified by its point 2. We have not read it. Whether it caps the size or share of what may be moved this way, we do not know.
What “no need” means for the three construction projects. The veterans’ home block, the Bely Yar cultural centre and the Askiz water supply lost their 2026 money to a standard formula. Whether that is a deferral to a later year or an abandonment, the decrees do not say, and no explanatory note is published for acts of this kind.
Whether part 12 applies here. It would let a region that receives no equalisation grants exceed its approved total expenditure on these same grounds. We did not check Khakassia’s grant status, so we do not know whether the republic has that larger power available as well.
What was in the budget law to begin with. We read the two decrees, not law No. 94-ZRKh. The absolute size of the lines these sums came out of, and therefore what share of each was moved, is not something we can state.