Russia's 2027 draft puts defence at 17.1 trillion roubles and cuts welfare 7 percent

Russia's draft 2027 budget puts defence spending at 17.1 trillion roubles, about $202.6 billion, which is around 27 percent more than the 13.5 trillion originally written down for 2026. It is the highest military line since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The same documents cut the bills that are not the war. Social policy falls 7 percent. Education falls 6 percent. Health care falls 6.8 percent. The national-economy heading, which covers roads, other infrastructure and farm subsidies, falls 7.4 percent.

Reuters obtained the fiscal papers and reported them on 29 September. The New York Times, writing on 1 October from the draft made public mid-week, put the military figure in the same place: more than $200 billion, up more than a quarter on the sum the last budget had initially provided for 2026. A year ago the finance ministry was still projecting a slight decline in military spending for 2026 and 2027. The new draft reverses that. Peace talks have not produced a stop, and the war has escalated over the past year. The budget is the document that says the Kremlin is paying for a longer war rather than a wind-down.

The social-policy cut is not a single programme. It covers state pensions, payments to war veterans and maternity benefits, and it shrinks by 7 percent against the earlier plan. Education's 6 percent cut includes money that had been marked for new university campuses. Health care's 6.8 percent cut reaches cancer-treatment infrastructure, the Times reported. These are not austerity lines in the abstract. They are the offsets for a defence number that has been revised up after the previous budget had revised it down.

The deficit is the other large figure. The Times put it above $60 billion next year. Debt is still low by the standard Putin likes to cite, around 20 percent of gross domestic product. Sanctions have pushed the borrowing onto the domestic market, mostly state banks, at bond rates that have run above 15 percent. A low debt ratio with a high coupon is a different problem from a high debt ratio with a cheap coupon. Debt service is rising inside the budget even as non-military programmes shrink, because the central bank has held rates up against inflation and because the treasury is borrowing more.

The politics of passage are not in doubt. The new State Duma, in which United Russia holds a constitutional majority, is expected to approve the draft. Officials have said winning the war takes priority over other needs. That sentence is the justification. The numbers are the content. A 27 percent rise in the military line, paid for by a 7 percent cut in social policy and a deficit above $60 billion, is a choice that can be voted and still be visible in the tables.

What the draft does not show is a battlefield result. It shows a government that has stopped telling itself the war budget will ease in 2027. The earlier projection of a slight fall is the baseline that makes the new figure legible. Without that baseline, 17.1 trillion is a large number. Set against 13.5 trillion, it is a revision. The revision lands on campuses, cancer infrastructure, maternity payments and roads at the same time as it lands on the armed forces.

Tax rises were already announced before these tables. The spending cuts sit on top of them, not instead of them. A household that meets a higher tax and a thinner social payment is the domestic face of a budget whose largest single story is the war. The Duma vote will not change that shape. It will ratify it.