bne IntelliNews – COMMENT: Russia’s debt relief scheme masks war spending in regional budgets
A quiet reshuffling of budget lines in several Russian regions is revealing how the Kremlin is using a federal debt write-off programme to subsidise military recruitment, according to Janis Kluge, fellow at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), Eastern Europe and Eurasia Group. In mid-June, Tomsk Oblast cut its official spending on “payments to citizens…

