Russia's newly updated budget plans "Government borrowing" of 5.0163tr rub to partly cover their 2026 budget deficit. This is a boring technical thread to explain why I think I understand this, and a bit of how they've been helped by the stronger ruble affecting some dollar/yuan debt.
Russia has: Domestic or "internal" bonds, I'll just call those OFZ. Foreign or "external" bonds, I'll call those FX bonds (because they're in foreign currency). [placeholder: I am pretty sure that OFZ in yuan count as "external", i.e. FX, will come back to this sometime] When Russia calculates its debt financing, it raises finance by selling new bonds, and it loses finance by paying back or "redeeming" maturing bonds. The financing figure above is the net effect, money raised from selling MINUS money paid out to redeem old bonds. Let's run through each term. Internal bond issuance: The linked data table shows results for Q1-Q3 of 2026. Multiply column 9 by column 13 to get the money raised: it is +4.0074tr rub. The screenshot shows their announced goal for Q4 is +2.45tr. Total: +6.4574 tr rub. [secondary market=tiny, will ignore for now]
Internal bond redemptions: Interfax reports 1.337tr rub, that will go as a negative. It's rounded slightly but I'll put in: -1.3370tr. interfax.com
External bond issuance: this Nikkei story reports on 10bn yuan worth issued on 3rd June. The Central Bank of Russia exchange rate was 10.7312 rub/CHY so that's +0.1073tr rub raised.
asia.nikkei.com
External bond redemptions: Russia paid back on ~$3m in bonds on 27/05/26. The official Central Bank of Russia exchange rate on that date was 71.6680 rub/$. External financing: -0.2149tr rub. Notably: the original budget plan assumed over 90 rub/$, they would have had to pay out almost 0.3tr rub.
Summary is Internal bond issuance: +6.4574 Internal bond redemption: -1.3370 INTERNAL TOTAL: +5.1204 External bond issuance: +0.1073 External bond redemption: -0.2149 EXTERNAL TOTAL: -0.1076 COMBINED TOTAL: 5.0128 Their stated goal is 5.0163. I am off by 0.0035tr. Firstly: I'd point out that it's very hard to understand how the internal total above matches their goal. I really think the published borrowing costs are net, and must include both internal and external components. I have an error of 3.5 billion rub or 0.07%, pretty good. Minor error sources 👉The redemptions were rounded to the nearest bn, so that's a +/-0.5bn potential error 👉Bond actions and payment dates might differ. E.g. if the $ and yuan bonds payments happened a day later, the changing USD exchange rate is worth 2.30bn rub and the yuan 0.95bn rub. So... if foreign bond payments use the exchange rate a single day away from the official bond maturity or auction date, then that is enough to fully explain the 0.07% error I have. Let's go back to the external financing total: I worked it out at -0.1076tr rub. The original Russian budget assumed an exchange rate of over 90 rub/USD. The financing table in the original 2026 budget, published late 2025, predicted -0.192tr rub for external bonds. The exchange rate might partly explain why they planned -0.192tr vs observed -0.1076tr.
Summary: I can explain the "Government Borrowing" on the new financing table to within 0.07%. It includes domestic debt changes AND issuance of 10bn yuan in other bonds AND paying back ~$3bn worth of eurobonds, which cost them in rubles. The stronger-than-planned ruble helped them out a bit.