Nearly 90 Percent of Russian Government Infrastructure Projects Currently Not Completed on Budget or on Time, Accounting Chamber Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 3 – Vladimir Putin and his regime often announce major transportation projects, and all too often those announcements and the time of completion and budget are treated as if they are a certainty. But a new Accounting Chamber study finds that almost 90 percent of government infrastructure projects aren’t completed on budget or on time.

            Moscow’s announcements of its plans typically receive widespread coverage, but the failure of contractors to meet deadline and stay on budget does not. As a result, it appears to many that the situation with regard to infrastructure construction is much better than it in fact is (ng.ru/economics/2025-12-03/1_9393_documentation.html).

            These failures to meet announced goals are hitting both projects Moscow has identified as “projects of the decade” and local jobs such as the reconstruction of bridges in small settlements without which residents numbering in the hundreds of less are forced to suffer for months or even years. 

            Frequently, Nezavsimaya Gazeta says in reporting the Accounting Chamber study, after great projects have been announced, “it suddenly turns out that construction is impossible” at anything like the initially advertised costs because problems at the site make any such project “impossible” from the very beginning.  

            Such problems continue to arise, the Chamber says, because Moscow is currently funding only one percent of the inspectors at sites that Russian law requires, something that means local political figures report that everything is fine because no one is doing the monitoring needed to tell them differently in a timely fashion.