Russia slashes cancer care as defence spending hits post-Soviet record
The federal cancer programme budget falls from 44.9 billion to 3.87 billion roubles in 2027 — a nearly 40-fold reduction against 2025 levels — as defence spending reaches 35% of all federal expenditure, the highest share since the Soviet Union collapsed.
By Knarik Papoyan & Euronews Russian
Published on 09/10/2026 - 7:00 GMT+2
Russia is cutting funding for its national cancer programme nearly twelvefold in 2027, from 44.9 billion roubles (€470.5m) to 3.87 billion roubles (€40.5m), according to the draft federal budget, as defence spending reaches its highest share since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The reduction is even sharper compared to last year: the programme received 148.5 billion roubles (€1.5bn) in 2025, meaning federal spending on cancer control would have fallen roughly 38-fold in two years if the budget passes as proposed.
Funding is projected to recover partially thereafter — rising to 5.76 billion roubles in 2028 and 12.78 billion in 2029 — but both figures remain far below current levels.
Since its launch, the federal cancer project has funded diagnostic equipment, cancer centres, and early screening programmes.
Under the new 2027-2029 budget, the remaining money is expected to go mainly to diagnostic and radiology equipment, while specialised units in smaller towns and rural areas face cuts, a distribution likely to deepen an already significant gap between cancer care in major federal centres and outlying regions.
Rerouting roubles
Officials have said some costs will be transferred to the compulsory health insurance system (OMS) and other budget lines rather than eliminated entirely.
Patient organisations and some experts have questioned whether the new mechanisms could fully offset the federal reduction, and noted that shifting costs to regional budgets and the OMS ties the quality of care more directly to the financial strength of individual regions.
The proposed cuts come as new data show Russian cancer patients are already bearing a growing share of treatment costs.
A study by the NGO Movement Against Cancer found that between 2019 and 2025, patients bought roughly one in every six or seven packs of cancer medicines out of pocket. In 2025 alone, household spending on anti-tumour drugs rose from 8.8 billion to 11.4 billion roubles, and the number of packs bought independently increased from five million to 5.8 million.
Around 94% of those drugs are on the list of essential medicines and should be provided free of charge.
The study's authors attribute the out-of-pocket spending not to patients choosing more expensive options — most purchases involved generics — but to supply disruptions and gaps in provision.
Russian law guarantees cancer patients free access to the medicines they need, but in practice, patients and doctors have long reported procurement delays and regional budget shortfalls.
State procurement remains substantial: official figures show the government bought 32.8 million packs of medicines worth 336 billion roubles through the OMS system in 2025. But the trajectory in out-of-pocket spending suggests the burden on patients is already rising ahead of the planned federal cuts.
Defence spending in the 2027 draft budget is set to reach 17.1 trillion roubles, or roughly 35% of all federal expenditure — a post-Soviet record.
More than four years of Moscow's all-out war in Ukraine have progressively shifted Russia's public spending, with civilian programmes including healthcare and medical infrastructure taking a backseat to continued expansion of defence outlays.
