It is almost meaningless to talk about the overall '2022' deficit, because the first 6 months were actually above budget, and things completely collapsed in November and December. It is incorrect to use 2022 as any type of projection onto 2023, it is more accurate to extrapolate from December and January, which gives a more accurate picture of how bad 2023 will be (roughly 30 billion per month in deficit). The second major thing wrong is any use of gold as an emergency resource that Russia can use in 2023. You simply can't sell off 10s of billions of dollars worth of gold, let alone 100 billion in a month or two. The sales of gold will be limited to at most half a billion per month, which even then they will have a hard time finding enough buyers without crashing prices. My math has russia with $130 billion in reserves, and 30 billion a month in deficits. They will burn the reserves by June, and then maybe get another month from the sales of gold, and another month from confiscating everything from the oligarchs, which they have already started to do. By this summer they will have to either give up the war spending, or else stop paying state employees like healthcare workers, teachers and pensioners. I don't think russia will run this down to 0 though, I think by April this war is over and they will surrender crimea in exchange for sanctions removal.