On 27 October Ryazan oblast published decree No. 80-пг, signed by governor Pavel Malkov on 23 October. It is one page, and it suspends a single point of an earlier decree:
“To suspend, from 00 hours 00 minutes on 24.10.2026, the operation of point 1 of the decree of the Governor of Ryazan oblast of 27 August 2026 No. 64-пг ‘On the fuel dispensing schedule’.”
The point it suspends had rationed petrol and diesel in the city of Ryazan and the surrounding municipal okrug by the last digit of the number plate. We read all four acts of this sequence in the official publication, as page images — the region publishes them as scans without a text layer. Taken together they describe a rationing regime in a Russian oblast capital and the okrug around it that stood for 57 days, was in force for 56 of them, and that no document in the chain explains.
The rota
Decree No. 64-пг of 27 August introduced the regime from 00:00 on 28 August at filling stations in the city of Ryazan and the Ryazan municipal okrug — with one exception, stations on federal highways. Its opening clause gives the purpose in the language of a security measure:
“in order to strengthen the protection of public order and ensure public safety on the territory of Ryazan oblast, to introduce a special operating regime for facilities ensuring the functioning of transport”
Point 1 then sets the schedule, and it is a plate rota of the kind normally associated with wartime or acute shortage:
“on even calendar days — with an even last digit of the state plate: 0, 2, 4, 6, 8; on odd days — with an odd last digit of the state plate: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9”
The decree is careful about edge cases in a way that suggests it was expected to be enforced rather than announced. It extends the rule to non-standard plates — transit, foreign and old-style — states that the region where the vehicle is registered is not taken into account, and provides that for cars already bought but not yet registered, fuel is dispensed against the purchase documents.
Point 2 is the second half of the rationing, and it is one sentence:
“Fuel shall be dispensed only into the vehicle’s fuel tank.”
That rules out filling cans, and with them any way of accumulating a reserve between a driver’s allotted days. Point 3 exempted the vehicles of emergency, utility and road services, the security agencies, school buses and public transport. The legal basis named in the decree is not a fuel or energy authority: it is point 4 of presidential decree No. 757 of 19 October 2022 — the decree “on measures carried out in the constituent entities of the Russian Federation in connection with decree No. 756”, whose title the Ryazan acts quote in full — together with protocol No. 38 of the Ryazan oblast operational headquarters, dated the same 27 August.
One day off, for the first day of school
Decree No. 65-пг of 31 August lifted the rota for exactly twenty-four hours, from 00:00 on 1 September to 00:00 on 2 September, citing protocol No. 39 of the operational headquarters and the reason:
“in connection with the holding in Ryazan oblast of festive events dedicated to the Day of Knowledge (1 September)”
This is the only full interruption in the whole period. It is also the only moment at which any of the four documents attaches the fuel schedule to something a resident of Ryazan would recognise — and it is a school holiday, not a supply event.
Day 47: the exemption list is widened
On 13 October, the forty-seventh day of the regime, decree No. 77-пг restated point 3 in a new edition. The services already exempt stayed exempt, and one category was added ahead of them:
“citizens entitled to out-of-turn service at trade enterprises in accordance with decree of the President of the Russian Federation of 2 October 1992 No. 1157 ‘On additional measures of state support for the disabled’”
The significance is less the category than the date. Forty-seven days in, the region was still amending the rota rather than ending it — maintaining it as working law with a defect to fix. Unlike the other three acts, No. 77-пг cites no headquarters protocol at all; it simply orders the change.
What was lifted, and what was not
Decree No. 80-пг suspends point 1 only. The rota is gone; points 2 and 3 are not mentioned and were not repealed. On the face of the documents, the rule that fuel may be dispensed only into a vehicle’s tank is still in force in Ryazan after 24 October, and so is the exemption list that now has nothing to exempt anyone from.
The wording is also a suspension, not a repeal, and it carries no end date — the mirror image of No. 65-пг, which suspended the same point and named the hour it would resume. Nothing in No. 80-пг prevents the rota from returning without a new decree being needed to re-create it.
Why this is about the ability to pay for the war
The arithmetic of the period is simple and it is the only arithmetic these documents permit. From 28 August to 24 October is 57 days. One of them, 1 September, the rota was lifted. For the other 56, an oblast capital and the okrug around it bought motor fuel on alternate days, in quantities limited to what a tank would hold.
There is no sum anywhere in the chain — not a volume, not a price, not a cost. What there is instead is a physical fact recorded in law: for two months the retail fuel market in one Russian region did not clear at the posted price, and the state’s response was to allocate it by plate number rather than to let the price do it. That matters for the question this site asks because the domestic pump is where the state collects fuel excise and VAT, and because it is also where the state pays. The damper — the subsidy to refiners for selling fuel at home below export parity — is a negative line inside our oil and gas revenue indicator itself, and we have shown before how much of the reported revenue figure it moves. The damper exists precisely so that the domestic market clears. Here is two months in which, in one region, it did not.
The other thing worth noting is which arm of the state acted. A shortage of motor fuel is a matter for a fuel regulator or an energy ministry. This was done by a regional operational headquarters under the October 2022 decrees, through protocols that are not published, and described as a measure for the protection of public order. The shortage is visible in the law; it is not admitted anywhere in it.
That distinction is getting harder to check from outside rather than easier. A month ago Russia closed the export and refining data through which the physical oil chain could be observed independently. The Ryazan decrees are, for now, the kind of evidence that remains: a regional government describing its own emergency in the only register available to it.
What this changes in our model
Nothing today. No number our indicators read has moved, and these decrees contain none. Oil and gas budget revenues stand at 10 of 100: the twelve-month real total is at 54.9% of the 2021 level, against a registered trouble line at half of it. The strength index stands at 46 of 100, in the stress zone; the current state of all eight indicators is on the monitor. Our guide explains what the ministry’s monthly figure includes and what it cannot say.
What we do not know
Why. This is the central gap, and it is total. Not one of the four acts mentions fuel supply, a refinery, deliveries or a shortage. “Protection of public order” is the purpose No. 64-пг writes for itself in its opening clause, not an account of why fuel had to be rationed. We did not establish a cause in this session and do not assert one.
What the headquarters decided. Protocols No. 38, 39 and 41 of the Ryazan oblast operational headquarters are the operative basis of three of the four decrees. They are not published, and we have not seen them.
Whether other regions did the same. Our search of the official portal was by the title “On the fuel dispensing schedule” and returned only these four Ryazan acts. A region that named its own act differently would not appear in that search, so this is a floor, not a count.
Whether the suspension is the end. The text suspends without a horizon. Whether the rota is finished or paused, the document does not say.
What it cost. No volumes, prices, refinery throughput or revenue effects appear in any of the four acts, and we did not seek them in other sources for this piece.