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Russia's 2026-2028 Budget Plan: Four Lines, One Decelerating Engine, and the Baseline Dip That Decides the Middle Year

The federal budget draft of Russia for 2026–2028, considered at a government meeting and reported by Interfax on September 24, 2025, is a three-year plan built around four published lines: non-oil-and-gas revenue, oil-and-gas revenue, baseline oil-and-gas revenue, and the deficit as a share of GDP. Non-oil-and-gas revenue is planned at 31.365 trillion rubles in 2026, 33.86 trillion in 2027 and 36.165 trillion in 2028, against a 2025 base of 28.430 trillion rubles — growth of 10.3%, 8% and 6.8% year by year, in the figures presented by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov (Антон Силуанов). Oil-and-gas revenue is planned at 8.919 trillion rubles in 2026, or 3.8% of GDP, then 9.05 trillion in 2027 and 9.705 trillion in 2028, at 3.5% of GDP in each of those two years. Baseline oil-and-gas revenue, the reference line against which the fiscal rule measures the oil windfall, is set at 8.957, 8.708 and 8.922 trillion rubles for the three years. The deficit is planned at 1.6% of GDP in 2026, 1.2% in 2027 and 1.3% in 2028.

Taken one line at a time, these are four schedules. Taken together, they are a single argument about where the money will come from, and the argument leans almost entirely on the non-oil-and-gas block. That block is planned to add 2.935 trillion rubles in 2026, 2.495 trillion in 2027 and 2.305 trillion in 2028 — increments larger, every year, than the entire three-year growth of the oil-and-gas block, which rises by 0.786 trillion rubles across the whole period. At the same time the block's own growth rate is planned to slow, from 10.3% to 8% and then to 6.8%, so the plan asks a decelerating engine to carry a budget whose other engine is designed to stand nearly still in relation to the economy. The second structural feature sits inside the oil-and-gas line: baseline oil-and-gas revenue dips in 2027, to 8.708 trillion rubles from 8.957 trillion, before recovering to 8.922 trillion in 2028. Because the baseline is the threshold of the fiscal rule, that dip changes what the rule does with the oil money in the middle year of the plan, and it changes what the deficit of that year has to absorb. This analysis reads the four lines of the draft as one trajectory: why the non-oil-and-gas block carries it, what the deceleration from 10.3% to 6.8% commits the plan to, and what the 2027 dip in baseline oil-and-gas revenue means for the rule and for the deficit path of 1.6%, 1.2% and 1.3% of GDP.

The draft in four lines: what the Ministry of Finance put on the table

Every parameter below belongs to the draft three-year budget as presented by the Ministry of Finance (Минфин) and reported on September 24, 2025; none is an outcome, and the draft's own language is that of a plan submitted for approval. The four lines, year by year, are:

Urban infrastructure construction in a Russian city
Urban infrastructure construction in a Russian city

The three-year format matters for how the lines should be read. A one-year budget law states a single set of targets; a three-year draft states a path, and a path carries assumptions that a single year does not have to declare. The 2026 column of this draft is the year about to be legislated; the 2027 and 2028 columns are the government's stated intention for the two years after it, and they are the columns in which the deceleration of the non-oil-and-gas block and the dip in the baseline oil-and-gas line actually appear. In other words, the interesting content of the draft is not in any single column but in the differences between columns, and those differences are what this analysis measures.

One more feature of the presentation is worth fixing before the arithmetic. The non-oil-and-gas figures were given by Finance Minister Anton Siluanov (Антон Силуанов) as growth rates attached to levels — 10.3%, 8% and 6.8% on a base of 28.430 trillion rubles — which means the draft publishes both the levels and the speeds. Publishing the speeds is a choice: it exposes the deceleration as part of the plan rather than leaving it to be discovered by subtraction. The rest of this reading does nothing more than take the published speeds and levels seriously, and follow where their differences lead.

The non-oil-and-gas block: +10.3%, then +8%, then +6.8%

The non-oil-and-gas line is the largest single component of the draft's revenue side. Starting from 28.430 trillion rubles in 2025, the Ministry of Finance plans 31.365 trillion in 2026, 33.86 trillion in 2027 and 36.165 trillion in 2028. In absolute terms the planned additions are 2.935 trillion rubles in the first year, 2.495 trillion in the second and 2.305 trillion in the third: a decelerating series of increments that nonetheless sums to 7.735 trillion rubles of new non-oil-and-gas revenue over the three years, or about 27.2% above the 2025 base. Set beside the oil-and-gas line, which the same draft moves from 8.919 to 9.705 trillion rubles across the entire period, the scale difference is stark: each single year of non-oil-and-gas growth in the plan is roughly three times the oil-and-gas block's growth over all three years combined.

The block's weight inside total revenue can be estimated directly from the draft's own two revenue lines. Adding oil-and-gas to non-oil-and-gas revenue gives total planned revenue of about 40.284 trillion rubles in 2026, 42.91 trillion in 2027 and 45.87 trillion in 2028. The non-oil-and-gas share of those totals is about 77.9%, 78.9% and 78.8% respectively: close to four fifths of everything the federal budget plans to collect, in every year of the horizon. A budget with that structure does not have two revenue engines of comparable size; it has one large engine and one smaller, deliberately steadied one, and the trajectory of the whole plan inherits the behaviour of the larger.

Why the deceleration is the plan's central assumption

The growth rates fall in two steps: from 10.3% to 8%, a slowdown of 2.3 percentage points, and from 8% to 6.8%, a further 1.2 points. Deceleration of this shape is normal for a block growing off a rising base — the same percentage on a larger number is a larger ruble amount, so holding increments roughly stable requires lower percentages — but the draft's increments are not stable, they shrink too, from 2.935 to 2.495 to 2.305 trillion rubles. The plan therefore assumes not merely a mechanically slowing block but a block whose absolute contribution narrows each year while remaining the only significant source of new revenue. That is the precise sense in which the trajectory rests on the non-oil-and-gas block: the oil-and-gas line is planned to contribute 0.786 trillion rubles of additional revenue across three years, and everything beyond that addition — the 7.735 trillion of non-oil-and-gas growth — is what finances the expansion of spending that the deficit path implies.

The deceleration also sets the plan's exposure. If the non-oil-and-gas block delivers 8% in 2027 instead of the planned rate, or 6.8% in 2028 comes in lower, the shortfall lands on a revenue side with no second engine of comparable size to absorb it. The draft answers that exposure not with a second growth engine but with the deficit line: 1.6%, 1.2% and 1.3% of GDP are the gaps the plan is willing to finance rather than close by cutting the spending path. The decelerating block and the small deficits are, in this reading, two halves of one decision — grow the large engine as fast as it credibly grows, and borrow the rest within a narrow, published band.

The oil-and-gas block: 3.8% of GDP, then 3.5%

The oil-and-gas line of the draft moves from 8.919 trillion rubles in 2026 to 9.05 trillion in 2027 and 9.705 trillion in 2028. In nominal terms that is growth of about 1.5% in the second year and about 7.2% in the third — a slow first step followed by a faster one. In relation to the economy, however, the line moves in the opposite direction: 3.8% of GDP in 2026, then 3.5% in 2027 and 3.5% in 2028. A revenue block that grows in rubles while shrinking as a share of GDP is a block the plan expects the economy to outgrow, and the draft's own GDP ratios say exactly that for the last two years of the horizon. The oil-and-gas block is thus designed as the steady component of the revenue side: present, sizable at roughly a fifth of total planned revenue, but not the source of the plan's expansion.

One route splitting into two arrowed branches with node markers: the diverging speeds of the non-oil-and-gas and oil-and-gas revenue blocks in Russia's 2026-2028 budget plan
Non-oil-and-gas revenue is planned to grow 10.3%, 8% and 6.8% a year, while oil-and-gas revenue moves from 8.919 to 9.705 trillion rubles, or from 3.8% to 3.5% of GDP.

Baseline oil-and-gas revenue and the dip of 2027

The third line of the draft, baseline oil-and-gas revenue, is the one that connects the oil money to the fiscal rule. The baseline is the threshold the rule uses: oil-and-gas revenue above the baseline is treated as windfall and channelled to savings rather than to spending, while revenue below it is a shortfall the rule's mechanisms must cover. The draft sets this line at 8.957 trillion rubles in 2026, 8.708 trillion in 2027 and 8.922 trillion in 2028 — a series that falls by 0.249 trillion rubles, about 2.8%, in the middle year before recovering by 0.214 trillion, about 2.5%, in the third.

Comparing the two oil-and-gas lines year by year shows what the rule is planned to do with the oil money. In 2026 the planned oil-and-gas revenue of 8.919 trillion rubles sits 0.038 trillion below the baseline of 8.957 trillion: a marginal shortfall, effectively a year in which the rule's threshold and the forecast coincide. In 2027 the relationship inverts and widens: planned revenue of 9.05 trillion against a baseline of 8.708 trillion is an excess of 0.342 trillion rubles. In 2028 the excess grows again, to 0.783 trillion rubles of planned revenue above a baseline of 8.922 trillion. Under the rule's logic, those excesses are not spendable: they are the windfall portion, directed to savings. The dip of the baseline in 2027 therefore does not loosen the middle year of the plan; it enlarges the part of that year's oil money that the rule sets aside, at exactly the point where the non-oil-and-gas block's growth slows from 10.3% to 8%.

This is the concrete meaning of the 2027 dip for the rule and for the deficit. A lower baseline lowers the threshold, and with planned oil-and-gas revenue still rising, a larger share of the oil line crosses above the threshold and leaves the spending side of the budget. The middle year of the plan is thus the year in which the oil block contributes least to financeable revenue relative to its own size, and it is no coincidence that 2027 carries the lowest deficit of the three, at 1.2% of GDP: with 0.342 trillion rubles of oil revenue earmarked by the rule and the non-oil-and-gas block still adding 2.495 trillion at 8% growth, the draft needs the smallest borrowed gap of the horizon. The 2028 column reverses both movements at once — the baseline recovers, the excess above it grows to 0.783 trillion, and the non-oil-and-gas rate falls to 6.8% — and the deficit widens back to 1.3% of GDP. The deficit line, in this reading, is the residual that balances a decelerating spendable non-oil block against an oil block whose windfall is increasingly saved rather than spent.

The deficit line: 1.6%, 1.2% and 1.3% of GDP

The draft's deficit path — 1.6% of GDP in 2026, 1.2% in 2027, 1.3% in 2028 — is a narrow band by the standards of any large budget, and its shape, a trough in the middle year, is the part that rewards attention. The draft's own GDP ratios for the oil-and-gas line allow a rough ruble scale to be attached to the percentages: 8.919 trillion rubles at 3.8% of GDP implies an economy of about 234.7 trillion rubles in 2026, while 9.05 and 9.705 trillion at 3.5% imply about 258.6 trillion in 2027 and about 277.3 trillion in 2028. On those implied denominators the planned deficits are of the order of 3.8 trillion rubles in 2026, 3.1 trillion in 2027 and 3.6 trillion in 2028 — approximate figures, derived from the draft's published pairs rather than stated by it, but sufficient to show the shape: a borrowed gap that narrows by roughly a fifth in the middle year and partly reopens in the third.

Set against total planned revenue of about 40.284, 42.91 and 45.87 trillion rubles, those deficits imply a spending envelope of roughly 44.0, 46.0 and 49.5 trillion rubles across the three years. The spending path, on this arithmetic, grows every year and grows fastest in 2028, the very year in which the non-oil-and-gas block slows to 6.8% and the rule's excess above baseline reaches its largest planned value of 0.783 trillion rubles. The widening of the deficit from 1.2% to 1.3% of GDP is the draft's own acknowledgment of that combination: slower growth in the spendable block, more oil money diverted to savings, and a spending path that continues to expand. The 2027 trough, symmetrically, is the year in which the combination is mildest — the non-oil block still grows at 8%, and the rule's diversion, though larger than in 2026, is met by the smallest borrowed gap of the horizon.

What the deficit path does not say

The published lines stop at the ratio. The draft as reported does not decompose the deficits into financing sources, so the mix of domestic borrowing, reserve-fund use and other sources behind 1.6%, 1.2% and 1.3% lies outside the published picture, and this analysis does not assign one. Nor does the report break the non-oil-and-gas block into its components — taxes on profits, personal income, value added tax and the rest — so the deceleration from 10.3% to 6.8% cannot be attributed to any named stream. The trajectory is fully documented at the level of four aggregate lines; its internal causes are documented only as the rates the Ministry of Finance attached to them. That is enough to measure the plan's reliance on the non-oil-and-gas block and the rule's treatment of the oil block, and not enough to name the streams underneath.

Reading the four lines together

Taken as one document, the draft supports four readings, each a direct consequence of the published pairs rather than an addition to them.

  1. The trajectory is carried by the non-oil-and-gas block: 7.735 trillion rubles of planned growth over three years against 0.786 trillion in the oil-and-gas block, with the non-oil share of total planned revenue near four fifths in every year.
  2. The carrying block is planned to decelerate, from 10.3% to 8% and 6.8%, with absolute increments narrowing from 2.935 to 2.495 and 2.305 trillion rubles — the plan commits its largest engine to a slowing, not a steady, contribution.
  3. The fiscal rule tightens the middle year from the oil side: the baseline dip to 8.708 trillion rubles in 2027 turns 0.342 trillion rubles of planned oil revenue into rule-bound savings, and the 2028 excess of 0.783 trillion extends that diversion to the final year.
  4. The deficit band of 1.6%, 1.2% and 1.3% of GDP is the residual that closes the plan each year: narrowest in 2027, when the non-oil block still grows at 8%, and widening in 2028, when that growth slows to 6.8% while the rule's diversion reaches its planned maximum.

The limits of the published picture

The same four lines leave three questions open, and an honest reading keeps them open. The draft as reported gives no component detail for the non-oil-and-gas deceleration, so the slowdown cannot be assigned to specific taxes or sectors. It gives no financing mix behind the deficit ratios, so the borrowed gap is measured but not sourced. And it gives no explicit statement of the oil price or exchange-rate assumptions from which the baseline series of 8.957, 8.708 and 8.922 trillion rubles was derived, so the 2027 dip can be measured and interpreted through the rule's logic but not traced to its macroeconomic origin. The plan is documented as a trajectory of aggregates; the analysis above is a reading of that trajectory, and it claims no more.

Conclusion: a three-year plan measured by its slowest assumption

The 2026–2028 draft reduces to a small set of pairs. Non-oil-and-gas revenue of 31.365, 33.86 and 36.165 trillion rubles at growth rates of 10.3%, 8% and 6.8%, on a 2025 base of 28.430 trillion. Oil-and-gas revenue of 8.919, 9.05 and 9.705 trillion rubles at 3.8%, 3.5% and 3.5% of GDP. Baseline oil-and-gas revenue of 8.957, 8.708 and 8.922 trillion rubles, dipping in the middle year. Deficits of 1.6%, 1.2% and 1.3% of GDP. Between the first and the last of these pairs runs the whole logic of the plan: a decelerating block that supplies nearly four fifths of revenue and all of its meaningful growth, an oil block whose windfall is increasingly routed past the spending side by the rule's baseline, and a narrow deficit band that absorbs the difference year by year.

The most informative single movement in the document is the one that looks smallest: the baseline's fall from 8.957 to 8.708 trillion rubles in 2027. It is a 2.8% step in a reference line, yet it decides how the middle year of the plan balances — enlarging the rule-bound savings exactly where the non-oil engine slows, and coinciding with the lowest deficit of the horizon. A three-year budget is ultimately a statement about which of its assumptions can be allowed to slow, and this draft answers plainly: the engine may slow from 10.3% to 6.8%, the oil windfall may be saved rather than spent, and the borrowed gap may move within a band of four tenths of a percentage point — but the non-oil-and-gas block must deliver, every year, more new revenue than all other sources combined.

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