Ivanovo cuts debt by write-off, not repayment

On 30 October Ivanovo oblast published decree No. 404-p of 29 October, approving the main directions of its state debt policy for 2027 and the planning period 2028–2029. It repeals the previous version, decree No. 371-p of 25 September 2025, and takes effect on 1 January 2027. It is nine pages, signed by Governor Stanislav Voskresensky, and we read it in full in this session.

Most regional debt-policy documents are templates. This one contains a sentence that is not. Among the goals of debt policy for 2027–2029, section 4 lists third:

“annual reduction of the volume of the state debt of Ivanovo oblast by exercising the right to write off debt on federal budget credits”

Not reduction of the debt. Reduction of the debt by write-off, written in as the method. The corresponding task, two paragraphs down, is “observing the conditions for exercising the right to write off the debt of Ivanovo oblast on federal budget credits.” The oblast’s stated plan for its debt over the next three years is to qualify for forgiveness.

It already works that way

Section 2 reports what happened in 2026. On the basis of an application by the governor, and under two Ministry of Finance orders — No. 109 of 20 April 2026 and No. 216 of 21 July 2026 — part of Ivanovo’s debt on federal budget credits was written off:

“as a result of which the state debt of Ivanovo oblast fell by 1.7 billion roubles”

Against the stock the same document reports for 1 January 2026, 8.5 billion roubles, that write-off is exactly 20%. The document does not give a figure for 1 January 2027, and the oblast intends to keep drawing federal infrastructure credit, so the current stock is not something we can state — but the single largest move in the debt last year was a cancellation, not a payment.

And the oblast expects more of it. Section 2 again:

“In 2027 – 2029 it is planned to continue the work on writing off the debt of Ivanovo oblast on federal budget credits.”

The structure: all of it federal, none of it market

Table 1 of the decree gives the three-year series. In billions of roubles and percentages, as the document sets them out:

The debt fell 4.6 billion roubles, or 35.1%, across the two years, and the burden fell 16.8 points. Throughout, the market share of the debt is zero and the federal share is one hundred. The decree treats this as the achievement: “The main result of the implementation of debt policy in 2023 – 2025 was the formation of an optimal structure of the state debt of Ivanovo oblast with an absence of market borrowing.” On Minfin’s own 2025 assessment of regional debt sustainability, Ivanovo was placed for the fourth year running in the group of borrowers with a high level of debt sustainability.

Section 5, on the instruments of debt policy, says the next three years are to run the same way — the policy will be implemented “by means of non-market instruments (budget credits drawn into the oblast budget from the federal budget)” — and closes with a flat statement:

“The attraction of credits from credit institutions, the placement of state securities of Ivanovo oblast, and the provision of state guarantees of Ivanovo oblast in 2027 – 2029 are not planned.”

No banks, no bonds, no guarantees, for three years. The only lenders named anywhere in the document are the federal budget and the Federal Treasury.

The ceiling goes up anyway

Here the document stops being consistent with itself. Section 2 forecasts that by the 2026 outturn the total debt burden will be “no higher than 12 percent” of revenue excluding gratuitous receipts. The same paragraph then sets the expectation for the following three years:

“The analogous indicator in 2027 – 2029 is forecast at a level of no higher than 17.6%.”

Table 2 makes it binding, setting ≤17.6% as the debt-sustainability target at 1 January 2028, 2029 and 2030 alike. That is 5.6 points above the level the oblast expects to end 2026 at, and close to half as much again in proportional terms.

A region that plans to shrink its debt every year by write-off does not need a higher ceiling. What the arithmetic of the document’s own two numbers shows is how much more it permits. The 8.5 billion at 1 January 2026 was 14.8% of revenue excluding gratuitous receipts, which puts that revenue base at about 57.4 billion roubles. Holding it flat, the 12% expected for the end of 2026 corresponds to roughly 6.9 billion of debt — which is very nearly 8.5 less the 1.7 written off, so the write-off alone accounts for the 2026 forecast. The 17.6% ceiling on the same base corresponds to roughly 10.1 billion: about 3.2 billion roubles of headroom above where the write-off leaves it.

That is our arithmetic, not the document’s, and it holds only if revenue excluding gratuitous receipts stays where it was. The decree contains no revenue forecast, which is the other way the ratio could get there — a ceiling can rise because the numerator is expected to grow or because the denominator is expected to shrink, and the document does not say which.

The rest of Table 2 is set where it cannot bind. The limit on annual repayment and servicing is ≤18% against an actual 1.0%; the limit on debt service as a share of spending is ≤1% against an actual 0.08%. Only the headline burden figure is anywhere near the oblast’s real position, and that is the one that was just raised.

Two deferrals, one of them named

Alongside the write-off, the decree records that payments are being moved. Under federal law No. 431-FZ of 28 November 2025 — the law on the features of executing budgets in 2026 — Ivanovo’s debt to the Russian Federation on budget credits, excluding credits for infrastructure projects, credits for topping up the single account balance and credits from temporarily free funds of the federal single account, “due for repayment in 2026 in the sum of 669.9 million roubles, is moved to 2030.”

Then, separately:

“In accordance with legislation, the repayment of debt on budget credits subject to return in 2027 - 2029 may be moved to 2031 – 2033.”

That second sentence names no act. We covered a 300-billion-rouble deferral of 2027–2029 regional budget-credit repayments in September as a bill whose text did not yet exist, and this decree is not evidence that the bill was enacted — 431-FZ is a 2025 law about 2026, and the oblast cites it only for the 669.9 million. What the decree does show is that an oblast government drafting its three-year debt policy already treats the 2027–2029 deferral as available law.

So three mechanisms run at once on the same debt: part of it is forgiven, part of this year’s payment has moved four years out, and the payments due in the three years this document covers may move four years out in turn.

The same week, Samara borrowed 23 billion

On 28 October the Samara oblast finance ministry published its order No. 01-07/83n of 23 October on the issue of the oblast’s 2026 bonds — documentary registered securities with a variable coupon and debt amortisation, state registration number RU34017SAM0. We read the issue decision in this session. Clauses 6 and 7:

“The total number of Bonds is 23 000 000 (twenty three million) units. The total volume of the issue of Bonds is 23 000 000 000 (twenty three billion) roubles at nominal value.”

Placement opens on 19 November 2026, by open subscription on the Moscow Exchange, with Sberbank CIB as the issuer’s authorised agent.

Two regions, one week, opposite documents. Samara is going to the market for 23 billion roubles at whatever the coupon resets to. Ivanovo has written down that it will not go to the market at all, because it does not have to: its creditor is the federal budget, and its plan is to be forgiven.

What this means for the series we track

We measure the consolidated regional budget balance as a rolling twelve-month total across all of Russia’s regions. 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. Nothing in this decree moves it: no reading changed in this morning’s run, and the strength index stands at 46 of 100, in the stress zone.

What it does is put the cleanest available case behind a limitation the guide already states — that a region which borrows from a bank and a region which receives a federal write-off can report the same balance. The balance records what was spent against what came in. It does not record who is owed, whether the debt behind it is priced by a market or by an application to the Ministry of Finance, or whether it will be repaid at all.

This month has supplied both ends of that range. Khanty-Mansi borrowed 88.9 billion, Rostov raised its deficit a third time with 95.7% of it bonds and bank credit, and Irkutsk covered 97.6% of a 38.7-billion deficit with bank credit capped at two years. Against them, Crimea reported no bank credits and no securities at all and booked its freed funds against war spending already incurred. Ivanovo belongs with Crimea, and goes one step further than any of them: it has made the write-off an annual objective in a document that governs the next three years.

The federal side of the arrangement is the part worth holding on to. The write-off rules cancel debt in the volume a region actually spends on an approved list, and from 2027 the war-spending route is to be open to all regions. A region financed this way has no market to answer to and no payment schedule that binds. What it has instead is a condition to satisfy, set by the centre, and a debt that the federal budget absorbs — which is where the cost of a regional shortfall ends up, in years beyond the horizon any of these documents plan for.

What we do not know

What Ivanovo owes now. The decree gives the stock at 1 January 2024, 2025 and 2026, and no figure for 1 January 2027. The 1.7 billion written off during 2026 and any new drawdowns both fall inside that gap, so 6.8 billion is what the write-off implies on its own, not a figure the document states.

Which orders wrote off how much. Minfin orders No. 109 and No. 216 are named with their dates, but the decree gives only their combined effect of 1.7 billion. The split between April and July is not in the text.

What the 17.6% ceiling is for. No borrowing amounts for 2027–2029 appear anywhere in the document — only relative limits — and there is no revenue forecast. Whether the ceiling anticipates more debt, less revenue, or simply a margin for safety is not stated, and our 10.1-billion figure above is an arithmetic consequence of a flat revenue base rather than a projection by the oblast.

What the 2027–2029 deferral rests on. The decree says such a deferral “may be” made in accordance with legislation but cites no law for it, and we could not reach the State Duma’s systems to check the status of the budget package — sozd.duma.gov.ru and duma.gov.ru have been unreachable for five days. The 2026 deferral of 669.9 million is the only one with an act attached.

Why the risk section contradicts the plan. Section 6 lists interest-rate risk — “the probability of an increase in the oblast budget’s spending on servicing the state debt as a result of an increase in interest rates on state borrowings” — and refinancing risk, the inability to make new borrowings on acceptable terms. Both describe a market borrower, which section 5 says the oblast will not be for the next three years. The decree does not reconcile the two, and we have not treated the risk section as evidence of any intention to borrow commercially.