By Barnaby "Bottom-Line" Coyne
For years, Russia's economy did something Western officials didn't expect: it kept running through war and sanctions. That story is getting harder to tell. CNBC reports Russia's wartime economy is under growing strain, with its budget deficit widening and analysts warning the pressure could intensify next year.
This matters beyond Moscow's balance sheet. A government fighting a war needs cash — for soldiers, for weapons, for the subsidies that keep ordinary Russians from feeling the full cost of the conflict at the checkout counter. A widening deficit means that math is getting harder, not easier, according to CNBC's reporting.
[The source material available to us did not include specific deficit figures, named analysts, or a breakdown of which sectors are hit hardest — details a full accounting would require, and which we flag rather than invent.]
What's worth watching from here: how the Kremlin closes the gap. Governments facing budget strain generally have a short menu — cut spending, raise taxes, print money and risk inflation, or borrow, which gets harder under sanctions. Each option lands differently on Russian households and on the war effort itself. CNBC's reporting frames the current moment as one where skeptics who predicted an earlier collapse were wrong on timing, but the underlying strain they flagged hasn't gone away — it's just taken longer to surface.
For American readers, the relevance isn't abstract. Sanctions policy, energy markets and the war's trajectory all rest partly on whether Moscow can keep paying its bills. An economy fraying at the edges changes the pressure on both sides of the negotiating table.
Somebody's paying for this. Let's find out who.
— Compiled from reporting by CNBC.
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