For Israeli readers, the name “Jewish Autonomous Oblast” may sound almost unreal.

A Jewish autonomy inside Russia? A region with a menorah, a rainbow-like flag, and Birobidzhan as its administrative center? At first glance, it may look like a strange historical footnote from the Soviet past. But today, this remote region on Russia’s Far Eastern border with China has become something else: a warning sign of how Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine is eating into the ordinary life of Russia itself.

According to Russian business media citing the operational report of Russia’s Accounts Chamber for January–March 2026, budget deficits were recorded in 56 “regions” in the first quarter of the year. In the first quarter of 2025, there were 46 such regions. In the first quarter of 2022, before the consequences of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine had spread through the entire system, there were only six.

This is also why the story matters beyond Russian domestic economics. As NAnews — Nikk.Agency Israel News noted in its original analysis, the number “56 out of 89” must be read carefully: it reflects the logic of Russian official reporting, which includes not only internationally recognized Russian regions, but also temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories. In that sense, Moscow’s own budget language exposes the cost of occupation. The Kremlin presents expansion as power, but its financial reports show something different: war and occupation are becoming a growing burden on the state, on the regions, and on ordinary civilian life.

That is the first important point.

The war is no longer only a military story. It is no longer only about the front line, missiles, mobilization, military factories, or Russia’s external confrontation with the West. It is becoming an internal financial strike against Russia’s own regions.

And one of the most symbolic victims of this process is the Jewish Autonomous Oblast.

The Jewish Autonomous Oblast was created as one of the strangest projects of Soviet national policy. Located in the Far East, near the Chinese border, it received the status of........

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