Soon you will be able to die for Putin for free.
[Part 2/2].
The regions that collected payments for the contract set budgets for 2026 with a deficit, and together this already amounts to 393 billion rubles. In the Saratov region, the same package of decisions that cut death payments tenfold guarantees 450,000 rubles to prisoners who sign a contract with the Ministry of Defense from November 1 until the end of 2026, but payments to recruits there are also reduced.
The regions ended last year with a record deficit of 1.5 trillion rubles. For 2026, Sberbank predicts a deficit of up to 2 trillion, and the Ministry of Finance predicts 1.3 trillion, which is 0.6% of GDP. In the first quarter of 2026, 56 regions were closed in deficit compared to 46 a year earlier.
At the same time, regions cut other expenses. St. Petersburg, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Irkutsk Region and Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug, considered the engines of the Russian economy, are cutting social spending, and authorities in several other regions have begun laying off civil servants, including doctors.
The federal budget doesn't look any better. For nine months, according to the Ministry of Finance, the deficit amounted to 5.2 trillion rubles, or 2.2% of GDP, while the budget law for the entire year 2026 allows 3.786 trillion, that is, 1.6% of GDP. This is 1.4 times the plan for the whole year.
Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said in May that the Ministry of Finance is examining this year's budget and is considering cutting spending outside of security and social obligations, and that the reserves "are not unlimited." The liquid part of the National Welfare Fund, according to independent estimates, then amounted to 3.63 trillion rubles. Three months later, in August, Siluanov said that "there are no problems" in the budget.
The channel has already published an analysis of how the authorities close this pit (part 1; part 2). Since April 2026, according to Bloomberg, the government has instituted an austerity regime and cut all non-war spending by 35%, protecting the military, military salaries, pensions and public sector employee salaries from cuts.