The year 2026 is turning into a period of unprecedented contraction for Russia's social sphere. According to calculations by Novaya-Evropa, healthcare and education have under-received at least one trillion rubles from the budget during the war. Over the first ten months of this year, journalists recorded more cases of 'tightening the belt' in the social sphere than in the entire year of 2025. In total, more than 800 episodes of cuts and institution closures have been detected since 2021, with over a quarter of them falling on the current year, which has already broken records.
Krasnoyarsk Maternity Hospitals: A Symbol of Systemic Crisis
One of the most high-profile examples is the story of two maternity hospitals in Krasnoyarsk. In September, clinic staff recorded a video appeal to President Vladimir Putin, warning that closing the facilities put the lives of expectant mothers at risk. 'When a woman with bleeding is driven across the entire city, she might not make it at all. Simply losing a woman and a child,' doctors said, citing the head of state's regular statements about supporting families and motherhood. The appeal had no effect: both maternity hospitals were closed. According to Novaya-Evropa, this case is just one of hundreds of similar ones across the country.
Methodology and Scale of the Study
To conduct the analysis, journalists used the deepseek-v4-flash language model to process posts from 571 regional Telegram channels and media outlets for the period from January 1, 2021, to November 8, 2026. Events in four sectors—healthcare, education, housing and communal services (gkh), and environmental protection—were highlighted in connection with five types of cuts: reduction of funding and salaries, consolidation and closure of budget institutions, equipment problems, reduction in staff numbers, and a decrease in the number of recipients of budget services. Cases related to the liquidation of covid units in 2020–2021 were excluded from the sample. According to the editorial board, about 8% of duplicates remain among the remaining records, and the real number of cuts may be higher than recorded, as some events do not make it into the news stream.
The Trillion-Ruble Funding Gap
The financial analysis was carried out using consolidated budget data across four sections of the budget system. From healthcare and education expenditures, amounts that, according to the methodology of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), were directed toward military purposes were subtracted. The starting point was taken as 2021, after which the calculated expenditure dynamics were indexed for inflation. The result: medicine spent 728 billion rubles less from the budget during the war years than it should have under inflation indexing. In education, the gap amounted to 322 billion rubles. In total, the two key components of the social sphere are underfunded by at least one trillion rubles.
From Concealment to Open Admission
Economist Sergei Aleksashenko noted in an interview with the YouTube channel The Breakfast Show that since 2026, officials have stopped hiding the reduction in social spending. 'Now, effectively… you start reading governors' Telegram channels, you start reading various social program assistants, and you see that this program has been cut, that program has been cut,' he stated. While officials previously avoided directly discussing social spending cuts, the reductions now feature in public statements by regional leaders.
Ecology and Communal Services: Different Dynamics, Same Problem
The picture is different in the other two sectors of social infrastructure: spending on environmental protection exceeded the inflation level by 345 billion rubles, and on communal services by 1.35 trillion rubles. However, as Novaya-Evropa emphasizes, this does not indicate an improvement in the situation. Approximately 90% of the funds from the 'Environmental Protection' budget section go to subsidies for automakers, and only a small part is directly related to ecology. Meanwhile, the funding for communal services, where the number of accidents grows year after year, remains significantly lower than necessary for the stable and safe operation of infrastructure. LDPR deputy Alexander Rybalchenko noted in his speeches the shortage of narrow specialists: 'There is no ENT doctor, no ophthalmologist, no dermatologist, no oncologist.'
