On 5 October the official publication portal posted decree No. 1288 of 2 October, nine pages signed by Mishustin, which we read in full this session. Five pages are the decree; four are amendments to four earlier government acts.
Between them they take the building of anti-drone defences out of the ordinary rules of state procurement in four separate ways at once, and add a fifth thing that is new in a different way: the risk of being shelled while you work becomes a line in the price the state agrees to pay.
Not one of the nine pages contains a sum.
The four levers
Each lever is a one-paragraph amendment to an act that has been in force for years.
Buy without a competition. Decree No. 339 of 10 March 2022, which lists the cases where the state may buy from a single supplier, gains a new sub-point. It covers procurement “for the implementation, in accordance with the Federal Law On Defence, acts of the President of the Russian Federation, and also decisions of the single national centre … of measures to counter threats of attack using unmanned aerial vehicles”. The mechanism that pushes a price down — somebody else bidding — stops applying.
Do not charge the contractor who failed. The Rules on writing off penalties, approved by decree No. 783 of 4 July 2018, gain a new ground for write-off: penalties accrued but unpaid where the supplier failed to perform “in connection with the arising of circumstances independent of it, entailing the impossibility of performing the contract” under those same measures. This one has a condition attached, in a second amendment to the same Rules: the contractor must have performed its obligations, “confirmed by an act of acceptance or another document”, and must justify the circumstances to the customer in writing, with supporting documents “if available”.
Do the work through subcontractors. Decree No. 570 of 15 May 2017 sets the types and volumes of work a contractor is obliged to carry out itself, without engaging anyone else. It now does not apply at all if the object is on the lists, or is located on territory where martial law has been introduced.
Leave the small-business quota out of it. Decree No. 708 of 22 May 2025 gains three new cases excluded from the aggregate annual volume of procurement against which the quota for small business and socially oriented non-profits is measured: work on martial-law territory, work on a listed object, and procurement for the anti-drone measures.
The clause that moves money
Point 2 of the decree is the one to read slowly. Where a contract signed before 1 January 2027 runs into “circumstances independent of the parties … entailing the impossibility of its performance”, the parties may agree to change its essential terms. The decree then lists what may change, and the list runs from the ordinary to the remarkable: the deadline, the volume and types of work, the construction resources, the stages, the acceptance and payment order, the advance — “not exceeding the maximum size of advance envisaged for recipients of federal budget funds” — and then, seventh in the list:
“zh) change (increase) of the contract price (including where, in the case established by sub-point ‘v’ of point 1 of the present decree, the volumes and (or) types of work performed do not change);”
A contract may become more expensive while the building it buys stays exactly the same.
That is not a loophole; it is the point, and sub-point “v” of point 1 says why. Point 1 changes what the state expert review of a cost estimate checks. Alongside the usual conformity with the federal register of estimate norms, it must now study and assess the calculations for their conformity with
“the conditions of carrying out works under conditions of unceasing threats of shelling, leading to downtime, envisaged by the project documentation”.
And if an object joins the lists after it has already passed that review, a repeat review is allowed — confined to the cost estimate, “without changes to the physical volumes of work, structural, organisational-technological and other decisions envisaged by the project documentation”. The rest of the estimate is explicitly not reopened.
So the sequence is: the object is listed, the estimate is re-examined for shelling downtime alone, the figure comes back higher, and point 2 lets the signed contract be raised to meet it. The state has written the risk of being hit into the price it pays, rather than leaving it with the builder.
Who it covers, and where the decree is narrower than it looks
Nine regions are named: the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Republic of Crimea, the Luhansk People’s Republic, Belgorod, Bryansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kursk and Kherson oblasts, and Sevastopol — or parts of their territory.
That list appears in point 1, and governs point 1: the expert review of the cost estimate. The rest of the decree is not drawn on a map. Point 3 extends the contract-change regime to any contract for federal needs that meets one of two conditions — concluded for the anti-drone measures under the defence law, presidential acts or the decisions of that single national centre, or covering an object on the lists. The amendments to the four older decrees are keyed to the lists, to martial-law territory, or to the measures. None of them repeats the nine names.
Points 5 and 6 push the regime outward, and they are worded differently from each other, which is worth keeping. Point 5 recommends that regional executive bodies and local administrations take measures enabling the same changes in contracts concluded for regional and municipal needs. Point 6 only asks companies procuring under the separate law for state-linked buyers to “take account of” the decree. A recommendation is not an instruction in either case, and neither carries money.
What this means for the series we track
We measure the federal deficit as a rolling twelve-month total: 3.3% of GDP through August, scoring 65 of 100 against a pre-war anchor — the 2021 surplus of 0.34% of GDP — and a registered trouble line at 10% of GDP. The consolidated regional balance stands at a deficit of 1.509 trillion roubles, scoring 31. Our guide to the budget deficit explains how the first is built.
This decree moves neither, and it will not move them on any date we can name. It contains no appropriation. What it changes is the direction in which federal and regional construction costs can travel after a contract is signed, and it removes three of the usual brakes on that travel. The advance clause has a sibling we covered on 1 October, when decree 1243 extended the 80% advance rule to 2030: money leaving the budget earlier than the work.
It also completes a pair. On 30 September the central bank cut the capital banks must hold against loans financing air-attack protection. That was the lending side of the same construction. This is the spending side.
The strength index is 46.4 of 100, in the stress zone, with all eight indicators covered. This morning’s run moved no reading.
What we do not know
How big any of this is. The lists of objects are approved “in the established order” and are not published. How many objects, in which regions, at what cost — none of it is in the decree, and government decrees are issued without the explanatory note or financial-economic justification that accompanies a bill.
Whether there is a ceiling on the increase. Point 2 permits the price to rise. It names no limit, no percentage and no cap, and refers to none elsewhere.
What the single national centre is. The decree relies on it three times and describes it only as “created in accordance with a decision of the President of the Russian Federation”, without naming that decision. We could not identify the founding act from this text or from the portal.
Whether the geography really stops at point 1. We read the drafting as confining the nine regions to the cost-estimate rules, because that is where the list sits and the later points use the lists instead. A reader of the same text could tie the defined term back to the geography. The decree does not settle it, and we are not going to settle it for them.