Russia’s healthcare and education sectors have lost out on more than a trillion rubles in funding since start of full-scale war, investigation finds

Russia’s healthcare and education sectors have received at least one trillion rubles less than expected from the state budget since the start of the full-scale war against Ukraine, the independent Russian news outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe calculated.The gap stems from funding for the two main components of Russia’s social sphere falling below the inflation rate. According to the outlet’s calculations, the government spent 728 billion rubles less on healthcare over the course of the war than it would have if spending had kept pace with inflation. The shortfall in education funding amounted to 322 billion rubles.Novaya Gazeta Europe’s reporters have identified more than 800 cases of staff cuts and institution closures in the social sphere since 2021. More than a quarter of them occurred in 2026 — a number not seen before. Over the past 10 months, the outlet identified more cases of “belt-tightening” in the social sphere than it did during all of 2025. The outlet did not provide exact figures.Regions forced to cut social spending include not only “poor” regions such as Karelia and the Vladimir region, but also industrial, resource-extracting regions such as the Kemerovo and Sverdlovsk regions, Krasnoyarsk Krai, and Yakutia.Sharp cuts to social spending began in 2025. The study’s authors link the cuts to the end of the wartime economic boom of 2023–2024.At Meduza, we are committed to transparency about our use of artificial intelligence in the newsroom. The story you’re reading was written by one of our living, breathing journalists and translated from Russian using an AI model configured to follow our strict editorial standards. This translation process is the result of extensive testing and refinements to ensure our English-language coverage is timely and accurate. A Meduza editor reviews every draft before publication.If you find any errors in this translation, please contact us at [email protected].To read Meduza’s exclusive content in English, please subscribe to our newsletter.