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started today at Vantor.com. It's Friday the 6th of February. Welcome to the BDB afternoon bulletin. I'm Mike Baker,

your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right. Let's get briefed. First up, it appears that the Kremlin is starting to feel real

financial strain. New numbers show Russia's budget deficit widening sharply as oil and gas

revenues plunged to their lowest levels of the Putin era. We'll look at what that might mean

for Putin's war effort. Later in the show, a top Russian military intelligence officer was shot and seriously wounded in Moscow on Friday,

marking the latest attack on Russia's top brass in the Russian capital.

I'll have the details.

But first, today's afternoon spotlight.

We're continuing to monitor the Russian economy,

and today we're seeing some of the clearest signals yet that the long-term financial

erosion that we've been talking about for months now is showing up directly in the numbers

that matter most to the Kremlin. According to new reporting, Russia's federal budget deficit

...