Can we see war costs in #Russia's federal budget? I looked for any indications in monthly budget data. Disclaimer: #Budget execution is often erratic and it's difficult to draw conclusions from one data point. I first looked at National Defence - not much to see here. 1/7
There is a small increase in Economy, but it does not look significant (especially since the data is not adjusted for inflation). 2/7
Maybe the most interesting change: Healthcare. There is a strong increase, but it coincided with a big wave of Covid19 infections. 3/7
The increase in healthcare spending was mostly due to an increase in the unspecified "other" category. There could be war costs in here, but we will only be able to differentiate next month. 4/7
Interestingly, there was a strong increase in the "other" category across several budget positions: Not only in Healthcare, but also Housing, Social Policy and Environment. 5/7
It is very likely that direct war costs will show up outside of the National Defence category, spread out all over the budget (like much of Russia's military costs). April data will help, but it will be hard to differentiate direct war costs from sanctions countermeasures. 6/7
There were some notable changes in smaller subcategories that I didn't mention here. They could also be due to changes in policy unrelated to the war. Overall, budget execution data will not provide a full picture, but the next releases will be extremely interesting. 7/7
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