bashkortostan Is Selling off National Assets to Pay for the War in Ukraine

To satisfy the whims of the kremlin leadership, bashkortostan is losing its main national asset – the company “bashneft”. It is being transferred to “rosneft” so that local authorities can at least partially plug the holes in the regional budget.

One of the reasons for the dire state of bashkortostan’s finances is that the republic’s leaders are zealously “encouraging” russians to participate in military adventures with various bonuses and incentives. As of January 1, a one-time regional payment upon signing a contract with the armed forces of the rf amounts to one million rubles. Currently, a large-scale advertising campaign is underway in Ufa, promising over 5 million rubles (including all other payments and allowances) for participating in the “special military operation”. In total, this year’s budget of bashkortostan allocates 24.5 billion rubles for “bonus” payments to participants in the war against Ukraine. In fact, the bashkirs are themselves financing their own participation and deaths in the war for the “russian world” against Ukraine.

bashkortostan’s head radiy khabirov has confirmed that the stake is being sold due to a massive budget deficit, which arose, in part, as a result of the aggression against our country. According to him, the ministry of finance is proposing to sell the entire stake still owned by the federal subject in order to remedy the situation. At the end of the first half of this year, bashkortostan’s budget was 17.1 billion rubles “in the red” – 70.7% of the annual target. The republic’s officials have already prepared a budget revision, increasing the deficit to 37.4 billion rubles by the end of the year.

At the beginning of the year, bashkortostan held a blocking stake (25% + 1 share) in “bashneft”: however, it subsequently sold a portion of its assets, valued at 14.8 billion rubles, to “rosneft”. Once the final sale of shares – scheduled for the second half of the year – is completed, the republic will be left with no oil production or refining of its own. And this – despite the fact that bashkortostan ranks 8th or 9th in russia in terms of oil production and is the leader in the volume of crude oil sent for refining.