ANALYSIS: With decree 686, Putin hides who buys Russian oil and how his refineries are holding up

The people who count

Decree 686

Decree 686, signed by Vladimir Putin on September 28, does not ban refining oil: it bans publishing the volumes.

On Russia’s official legal information portal, its title fits on one line. A list of fuel and energy sector information to which access is restricted.

Rosstat has not published oil production since 2023, nor gasoline output since 2024, Meduza notes. The decree adds more blank cells to the table.

That is what this piece is about. The blank cell. The one left in a table when a number becomes awkward. While Ukrainian drones hit Russian refineries, Moscow chooses to erase their volumes.

Columns to empty

The ban does not only target state agencies like Rosstat. It also covers the media and any online publication, according to The Moscow Times, cited by NV.

In every business newsroom, someone keeps these tables. Someone who logs a volume, a price, a tanker departure, week after week. You can hear the keyboard late at night.

In Russia, that work is becoming something you are no longer allowed to publish.

No prison announced. No fine. Just a ban.

A number withdrawn makes no noise. Nobody protests for a column in a table. That is what makes it so convenient.

One column. Then another. Then the table.

Counting becomes suspect, even without a fine.

No more buyer’s name

What the decree lists

The list is long. Glavnoe has laid it out from the text.

Gone, the buyer’s name. Gone, the seller’s. The carrier’s and the insurer’s too. And the marine terminal, along with its operator.

The volumes and prices of exported goods also go under seal. So do the payment terms of contracts.

The name. The price. The payment. Everything a sanction looks for first.

From coordinates to customs

And the vehicles. And the container numbers. And the transport documents.

The destinations, the routes, the points of loading, transshipment and delivery. The coordinates of warehouses and storage sites. Customs clearance documents. Aggregated customs statistics on exports.

A bill of lading is paper that gets stamped and signed. That paper will no longer leave the office.

Ten families of data on Glavnoe’s list. Ten blank cells in a single stroke.

A ship without a name is harder to track. A buyer without a name, harder to sanction.

Each name withdrawn makes a sanction slower. None makes it impossible.

The oil travels, its paperwork vanishes.

The refineries on the list

A line apart

One item stands out in this list of exports.

The decree also restricts access to the processing and production volumes of each Russian refinery, according to Glavnoe and NV.

The wording is administrative, according to The Moscow Times cited by NV: processing and production volumes of a legal entity, a Russian refinery. Its target is not.

Moscow is banning the counting of its own refineries.

A sanction targets a buyer, a ship, a payment. The volume processed at Syzran or in Moscow says nothing about a foreign buyer.

It says something else. It says whether the plant is running.

It says whether it is running at half speed. It says whether it has stopped.

92-octane gasoline and diesel

The list goes further. It covers planned sales volumes and exchange inventories of certain petroleum products, including gasoline rated 92 octane or higher and diesel, according to Glavnoe.

Gasoline. Diesel. What Russian drivers put in their tanks.

This piece argues that decree 686 is first of all an admission. It hides two things at once: the routes of oil sold in spite of sanctions, and the condition of refineries that Ukraine is hitting.

A refinery doesn’t hide a buyer. It hides a condition.

“Unfriendly” actions

The official version

The decree presents itself as retaliation. It answers “unfriendly” actions by the United States and its allies, according to Glavnoe.

The text speaks of urgent measures against American actions contrary to international law, and against the states and organizations that have joined them, UNN quotes.

Reuters puts it more simply. The decree aims to make sanctions harder to enforce.

A response, says the text. A shield, says the agency. Both words name the same gesture.

Washington is named. Its allies too. International organizations too. Everyone is targeted, except those who buy.

Publication remains allowed in one case only: when a company involved in the transaction discloses its own data. Customs data is restricted as well.

An old habit

Moscow is inventing nothing. Russia has already classified several data sets, crude production among them, as Western sanctions piled up, Reuters recalls.

Those sanctions began after the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. They hardened with the full-scale invasion of February 2022.

Every wave of sanctions has brought its wave of secrecy.

So only companies will still be able to publish their figures. They are also the ones with the most interest in keeping quiet.

A sanction looks for an address. The decree erases it.

No fine attached

No penalty on the books

The decree has its limits. They need to be stated.

It sets no penalty for violations, The Bell points out, as cited by Meduza.

It does not say which products will be covered. It does not say what penalty awaits whoever publishes. It does not say who will enforce it.

Ten days for the list

The government has 10 days to settle the precise list of products covered, according to Glavnoe and the Kyiv Independent.

A ban without a fine works first on those who obey out of caution. State agencies. Media outlets that want to last. Analysts working inside Russia.

It works far less on those watching from outside.

A ban without a penalty is still a ban. It is enough to know it exists. Caution does the rest.

Who will decide that a news story has crossed the line?

Ten days. Then a list of products. Then, perhaps, more blank cells.

And yet a country does not sign a five-page decree for nothing. Even without a fine, it signals what it no longer wants counted.

A ban without a fine targets the obedient first.

Forty-five percent, says Kyiv

The General Staff, September 21

On September 21, Ukraine’s General Staff claimed that strikes had knocked out more than 45% of Russia’s planned refining capacity, Interfax-Ukraine reports.

The figure came the day after the strike on the Moscow refinery, the General Staff specified.

The General Staff adds that production of Euro-5 standard gasoline and diesel has dropped sharply. It sees a shortage of quality fuel in Russia.

Less gasoline. Less diesel. Fewer figures to check it.

A third, says The Moscow Times

This is a belligerent’s figure. The Kyiv Independent says it could not verify it. We report it as such.

It concerns planned capacity, not actual output. The distinction matters. It is precisely what the decree now prevents anyone from measuring.

The Moscow Times, cited by NV, writes that Russian refineries have lost a third of their capacity this year.

Two figures. A third, or nearly half. Neither comes from Moscow.

And Moscow has just banned publishing its own.

Two estimates, and the one exact figure goes secret.

Syzran, Yaroslavl, Moscow

Three refineries in one week

Ukraine’s General Staff details its targets for the week of September 14 to 20, according to Interfax-Ukraine.

On September 15, in Syzran, in the Samara region, a primary distillation unit and a tank farm. On September 17, in Yaroslavl, at a refinery that processes about 15 million tonnes of crude a year, another distillation unit. On September 20, in Moscow, a distillation unit, an integrated processing unit and an isomerization unit.

Three cities. Three distillation units. One week.

Kyiv presents these strikes as the exercise of its right of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter, according to the same report.

And the week after

The campaign did not stop on September 21. Two days before the decree, Ukrainian forces hit the Ilsky refinery, in Krasnodar Krai, the Kyiv Independent reports.

Overnight on the 28th, a fire was reported at the Pavlovskaya oil depot, in the same region, according to the same outlet.

The decree was signed that same day.

Every strike leaves three traces: a filmed fire, a statement, a production figure. The decree goes after the third.

The calendar speaks for itself. A depot burns in the night; the volumes become secret the same day.

Refineries hit, a decree the same day.

A twenty-year low

A gasoline crisis

A fuel crisis began in Russia in 2026 under Ukrainian strikes on refineries, Meduza writes. By various estimates, Russian refining has fallen to its lowest level in 20 years.

The Perm and Novoshakhtinsk refineries stopped operating after strikes on September 25 and 26, according to a Ukrainian official cited by the Institute for the Study of War.

The Moscow refinery supplies about 40% of the capital’s fuel, according to the Kyiv Post.

Twenty years backward, in a few months. And a capital whose main supplier has been hit.

A shortage is measured in litres, in lineups, in prices. The decree removes one of those instruments.

The exchange inventories

This is where the blank cell moves. It leaves the export tables. It arrives at the pump.

Just as gasoline runs short, the decree bans publishing exchange inventories of gasoline and diesel.

A driver doesn’t read inventories. He only hears the click of the nozzle when the tank is full. He doesn’t know what is left behind it.

How much 92-octane gasoline is left in the exchange’s reserves?

The answer exists. It is no longer allowed to circulate.

The exchange inventories were one of the few public thermometers. The thermometer goes. The fever stays.

The shortage goes on. Its number disappears.

2023, 2024, 2026

A statistic in retreat

Rosstat stopped publishing oil production in 2023. Rosstat stopped publishing gasoline production in 2024.

In 2026, decree 686 closes off the refineries, the terminals, the routes and the customs data.

Three dates. Three retreats. One direction.

Russia does not stop producing. It stops saying how much.

Reuters traces the movement back to 2014. Twelve years of cells emptying one by one. And the day the last column goes blank…

What each cell held

A statistic withdrawn is not a statistic that disappears. It goes on existing in the offices that produce it.

It only stops existing for those who wanted to read it. Researchers. Journalists. Cautious buyers. Governments that impose sanctions.

I admit I long believed a published number was worth more than a withdrawn one. I now believe a withdrawn number sometimes says more.

It gives the date it became awkward.

Every crisis adds a blank cell.

Tankers without names

What a sanction looks for

A sanction does not hit a country in the abstract. It targets a name.

A buyer. A ship. An insurer. A bank that settles the payment. A terminal that loads the cargo.

These are exactly the cells decree 686 empties, according to the list published by Glavnoe.

Western sanctions have targeted Russian energy since the annexation of Crimea, and even more since 2022, Reuters recalls. Each new list relies on data. The decree takes that data out of circulation.

The researchers’ work

Limiting the release of buyers, routes and terminals can make it harder to track Russian energy flows, the Kyiv Independent writes. For governments. For researchers.

A tanker that can no longer be named from Moscow is still visible at sea. It will just have to be found another way, and more slowly.

The decree does not erase the ship. It erases the shortcut.

Every extra hour of searching is an extra hour of cargo. Time becomes Moscow’s ally.

The decree does not make sanctions impossible. It makes them more costly to enforce.

The ship stays at sea. Its name leaves the register.

Three audiences for one silence

Sanctions investigators

Who does this silence serve? The analysis allows three answers, and they are not mutually exclusive.

The first is official, and Reuters states it: to hamper sanctions enforcement. The Kyiv Independent adds that spotting evasion becomes harder.

A silence for sanctions investigators.

Drivers and analysts

The second has to do with the exchange inventories. A government that hides gasoline stocks in the middle of a crisis would also be trying to calm its own market. That is an inference. The decree does not say so.

A silence for Russian drivers.

The third has to do with the refineries. Publishing their volumes would let anyone measure, week after week, the effect of Ukrainian strikes. Everything suggests Moscow prefers that nobody be able to do that math.

A silence for the analysts who measure the strikes.

None of the three readings rules out the others. The decree claims only one, retaliation against sanctions. The other two can be read in its list.

The first reading belongs to Reuters and the Kyiv Independent. The other two are ours. We present them as such.

One silence, three audiences, one admission.

What the decree gives away

What a secret is for

An economy in good shape publishes its figures. It uses them to attract buyers, reassure markets, contradict adversaries.

And yet the Kremlin chooses the opposite. It withdraws the volumes of its own plants just as Kyiv claims to have hit them.

That is what the decree is for. It is not protecting an industrial secret. It is protecting a condition.

An intact refinery has nothing to fear from a table. A damaged one does.

The decree speaks to the world in five pages. It tells the world not to look there. That is precisely where to look.

We prefer a debatable number, published, to a blank cell. A debatable number can be challenged. A blank cell cannot.

An admission in five pages

The decree runs five pages, according to the official portal. Nowhere does it write that the refineries are suffering.

It doesn’t need to.

On September 20, Donald Trump asked Zelensky to stop hitting Russian refineries, according to NV. Eight days later, Moscow banned publishing their condition.

Two different gestures. The same refinery at the centre.

What you forbid counting gets counted elsewhere.

A blank cell that speaks

Tracking oil without its paperwork

Decree 686 will stop neither the tankers, nor the strikes, nor the gasoline crisis. It will stop the tables.

It closes no refinery. It closes their books.

Western sanctions will have to follow ships without names, buyers without names, routes without coordinates.

The tables will stop. The strikes won’t. The tankers won’t either.

And yet oil that is hidden is still oil that is sold. Its revenue, by every indication, keeps financing the war Kyiv endures every day.

What is left to read

How will our sanctions follow oil whose routes Moscow now erases?

The blank cell, for its part, can already be read.

It gives the date the number became awkward.

Decree 686 hides the numbers, not what they were saying.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• Official Russian legal information portal — presidential decree 686 on restricted-access energy data, September 28, 2026
• Reuters — Putin further restricts disclosures on Russian energy and refining, September 28, 2026
• Interfax-Ukraine — General Staff claims 45% of Russian refining knocked out, September 21, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Meduza — a ban with no penalty, Rosstat silent since 2023 and 2024, refining at a 20-year low, September 28, 2026
• Glavnoe — the data restricted by decree 686, September 28, 2026
• Kyiv Independent — the refinery data decree and sanctions tracking, September 29, 2026