The regime’s fiscal contortions reveal a deeper vulnerability The Kremlin’s accountants are having a problem: Russia’s state budget, once the engine of spectacular growth, is now flashing red. The mathematics are brutal. Russia’s fiscal deficit has ballooned to 3.7 trillion rubles in June – roughly $46 billion – skating perilously close to this year’s legal limit. As a share of GDP, the deficit threatens to breach the 1.7 percent ceiling, a prospect that has Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of the