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Ukrainian long-range strikes on Russian territory are usually assessed in terms of their physical effects: a damaged oil refinery, an offline processing unit, reduced fuel production, or disrupted logistics. Yet throughout 2026, another consequence has become increasingly visible — less dramatic, but potentially more enduring.
The Russian state has begun to change the rules governing its relationship with the owners of critical infrastructure.
On 24 August 2026, Vladimir Putin signed Decree No. 604, “On Measures to Ensure the Security of Critical Infrastructure Facilities of the Russian Federation.” The decree allows temporary management to be imposed on the property of an economic entity if it failed, or failed in a timely manner, to implement security measures; violated established security requirements; proved ineffective in countering the threat of drone attacks; or failed to restore, or restored too slowly, the operation of a critical facility.
This is an important shift. The wartime vulnerability of an enterprise can now create not only operational and financial risks for its owner, but also a risk of losing effective managerial control.
Decree No. 604 is drafted broadly. It applies to facilities in the fuel and energy sector, industry, communications, public utilities, transport and logistics, the energy sector — including nuclear power — life-support systems, as well as other facilities deemed particularly important for Russia’s security, economic stability, or the functioning of society.
Even more significant is the potential scope of state intervention. Temporary management may cover not only the damaged facility itself, but all or part of the movable and immovable property of the relevant company, its securities, stakes in Russian legal entities, and other property rights.
The decision is taken by the government on the basis of a presidential instruction. By default, the Federal Agency for State Property Management, Rosimushchestvo, acts as temporary manager, although the government may appoint another structure if instructed by the president.
Formally, this is not nationalisation. The temporary manager receives the powers of an owner, but not the right to dispose of the property — meaning it cannot sell or otherwise alienate the asset. Ownership does not automatically transfer to the state. The temporary-management regime is terminated by a separate government decision, again on the basis of a presidential instruction.
From a corporate perspective, however, the distinction between formal title and effective control is crucial. A company may legally continue to own an asset while losing the ability to determine how that asset is managed.
This is where Ukrainian strikes begin to generate institutional, rather than merely physical, costs.
According to the International Energy Agency, Russia operates roughly 32 large oil refineries with total installed capacity of about 6.5 million barrels per day. By June 2026, actual refinery throughput had fallen to 3.8 million barrels per day — the lowest level in more than two decades and around 30% below the level recorded a year earlier.
The IEA estimated that gasoline output had fallen by approximately 20%, while diesel production had declined by close to 30%. During the first eight months of 2026, a major Russian refinery was struck, on average, roughly once every three days.
By the end of August, according to the IEA, only five major Russian refineries had not yet been reached by Ukrainian drones; all were located in Eastern Siberia or the Russian Far East.
The Agency also noted a shift in Ukrainian tactics: repeated waves of drones against the same site are increasingly being used to overcome passive protection, while growing range has made it possible to strike facilities as distant as the Omsk refinery, approximately 2,500 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.
The Orsk refinery in Orenburg Oblast became a particularly revealing case. Following a strike on 13 August, the plant was completely shut down. Governor Yevgeny Solntsev reported damage to critical infrastructure and warned that repairs could take up to six months because of dependence on imported equipment and sanctions-related restrictions. The region was forced to rely on externally supplied fuel and reorganise its logistics.
By August, shortages had become serious enough for filling stations in Moscow and other regions to reintroduce limits on the amount of gasoline sold to individual customers. The Russian authorities simultaneously restricted fuel-product exports, eased some fuel-quality requirements, and explored additional import options.
The protection of refineries has therefore ceased to be an internal problem for individual oil companies. It now has direct implications for the domestic fuel market, regional logistics, and the state’s ability to maintain normal economic activity.
In this context, Decree No. 604 changes the distribution of responsibility.
A substantial share of the means used to counter aerial threats remains under state control: air-defence systems, military electronic warfare, airspace management, and the allocation of military resources. A private company can build physical protective structures, create redundancy, improve fire safety, deploy permitted drone-detection systems, or modify industrial processes. But it does not control the wider territorial air-defence architecture.
Despite this, it is now the owner who may be judged to have protected the facility inadequately.
First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov stated explicitly that private owners approach the protection of their enterprises “with varying degrees of responsibility” and that the new mechanism would be applied selectively to individual companies. At the same time, he insisted that the authorities did not view the decree as a general nationalisation programme.
Russian business immediately focused on the ambiguity of the criteria. Alexander Shokhin, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, called on the authorities to clarify what exactly would constitute “untimely restoration” for different categories of facilities, what responsibilities a temporary manager would assume, and whether companies would receive state support for investments in anti-drone protection.
This is the central asymmetry of the new system: the state controls a significant proportion of the instruments required to counter wartime threats, yet it may assign responsibility for an inadequate outcome to the owner of the asset.
Only days after Decree No. 604 was issued, the government established a subcommission responsible for ensuring the uninterrupted operation of selected sectors of the economy.
Manturov was appointed its chair. His deputies include Deputy Prime Ministers Alexander Novak and Dmitry Grigorenko, as well as Deputy Chief of the General Staff Anatoly Kontsevoy.
The participation of a General Staff representative alongside senior economic officials is itself revealing: the protection of privately owned industrial and logistics infrastructure is no longer solely an issue of corporate security. It is increasingly becoming part of a joint economic-military governance system.
At the subcommission’s first meeting, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, working with business representatives, had already identified 167 sites for possible inclusion on the list of critically important facilities.
The principal areas of work include monitoring key enterprises, rapid restoration, engineering and regulatory solutions for protection, maintaining reserves of critical resources, diversifying logistics, and creating alternative supply chains.
Decree No. 604 has therefore not remained a declaratory legal instrument. A permanent administrative architecture is already being built around it.
In 2026, Russian authorities have faced more than attacks on oil infrastructure. Strikes have increasingly affected major storage and logistics facilities.
Reuters reported that, beginning on 18 July, attacks affected at least two dozen Wildberries warehouses, while Ozon logistics sites also suffered damage in August. As the geographic scope of attacks widened, the Russian leadership increasingly began to treat commercial logistics as part of the country’s critical infrastructure.
At the same time, the state cannot simply impose higher protection costs on asset owners. It is also being forced to absorb part of the broader economic impact.
Government Resolution No. 1074 of 25 August granted Wildberries sellers that had suffered significant losses because of the attacks a 12-month deferral on several taxes and insurance contributions, followed by a further year of instalment payments. Some tax inspections were also suspended for eligible businesses until the end of 2026.
This creates a dual structure.
The state disciplines the owners of critical facilities by requiring them to spend more of their own resources on resilience, while simultaneously being forced to socialise part of the secondary economic losses when strikes affect hundreds or thousands of other companies across supply chains.
It is in this sense that the concept of “nationalising the losses” is analytically useful — provided it is not interpreted literally.
The Russian state is not simply taking over loss-making enterprises. Rather, it is gradually acquiring greater strategic control over how private assets must operate during wartime, while leaving a substantial proportion of the costs of protection and recovery on corporate balance sheets.
It would nevertheless be misleading to explain every case of temporary management in Russia through Ukrainian attacks.
On 25 April 2023, Decree No. 302 created a separate mechanism applying to assets belonging to persons from states designated by Moscow as “unfriendly”. The official rationale was retaliation for restrictions imposed on Russian property abroad and for perceived threats to Russian economic, energy, and other forms of security.
Again, ownership did not formally transfer to the state, but an appointed temporary manager received the powers of an owner except for the right to alienate the property.
Russian assets belonging to Fortum, Uniper, Danone, Carlsberg, and other foreign companies have passed through this mechanism.
The outcomes have differed.
Temporary management of Carlsberg’s Russian assets ultimately ended with the sale of the business to local investors for approximately $321 million, whereas the company had valued its net Russian assets at more than $1 billion at the end of 2022. By contrast, the assets of Italy’s Ariston were later returned to their owner.
Temporary management therefore does not automatically result in permanent expropriation. It does, however, create significant uncertainty over the ultimate fate and value of an asset.
On 17 September 2026, another particularly revealing example emerged.
Under Decree No. 661, Putin added stakes and shares in 16 Russian legal entities associated with Nestlé, Auchan, FM Logistic, Bati Logistics, and the Lemana PRO retail network to the list of assets placed under temporary management.
In every case, management was assigned to JSC L.E.V. Management.
Legally, the decision was taken under the framework of the 2023 Decree No. 302 — not under the new Decree No. 604 on critical-infrastructure protection.
The assets involved are substantial. Nestlé operates six production facilities in Russia and employs around 7,000 people. At the end of 2025, Auchan had more than 24,000 employees and 229 stores in Russia, with sales of approximately $1.5 billion in the first half of 2026.
The Kremlin nevertheless drew its own political connection between the decision and the wider war.
Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated that one factor was the companies’ origins in European states that Russia regards as “unfriendly”. He also referred to what the Kremlin describes as those states’ participation in military actions against Russia, including strikes on “civilian economic infrastructure”.
This should be treated as the Kremlin’s stated justification, not as evidence that the individual companies were involved in the attacks.
There is therefore an important distinction between Decrees No. 302 and No. 604.
The first provides the state with a mechanism to control certain foreign-owned assets in the context of Russia’s confrontation with the West. The second allows intervention in critical infrastructure when wartime resilience or restoration is considered inadequate.
The legal grounds are different. The broader tendency — an expansion of the state’s ability to assume operational control over private assets — is the same.
The administrative overlap is also increasing. On 28 August, the Bank of Russia approved common requirements for registrars and depositories handling securities under temporary management under both Decree No. 302 and the new Decree No. 604.
The two regimes remain legally distinct, but parts of their administrative infrastructure are beginning to converge.
The choice of temporary manager deserves particular attention.
JSC L.E.V. Management was registered in Moscow on 16 October 2024. Its authorised capital is just RUB 15,000, and its principal registered activity is management and business consultancy.
For 2025, the company reported a net loss of RUB 15,000.
Andrei Krayushkin became its chief executive on 10 September 2026 — seven days before the presidential decree transferring major foreign assets into the company’s management.
There is another unusual detail.
On the website of JSC Reestr, the company’s registrar, L.E.V. Management continued to appear among ready-made joint-stock companies offered for acquisition. The service explicitly describes a model under which a buyer can acquire 100% of the shares in a ready-made company while simultaneously replacing its general director.
According to independent Russian investigative outlets and corporate databases, the company had zero revenue and one employee in 2025.
Its ultimate shareholders are not disclosed in Russia’s public corporate registry because it is a non-public joint-stock company.
Krayushkin himself has been identified by several independent outlets as former police Major General Andrei Vyacheslavovich Krayushkin. Public anti-corruption declarations and official reporting from 2016–2019 confirm that an official with this full name served as first deputy head of the Russian Interior Ministry’s Main Directorate for Migration and held the rank of police major general.
At the same time, open sources do not establish the ultimate beneficial owner of L.E.V. Management. There is therefore insufficient evidence to attribute control of the company to any particular Russian business clan or senior official.
When Peskov was directly asked why such a little-known structure had been selected to manage assets of this scale, he did not disclose the criteria, saying only that the company “best met the necessary parameters”.
There was an important earlier episode.
On 17 August — one month before Decree No. 661 — a little-known company called KS Logistika appealed to Putin with a proposal to introduce temporary management over five Russian Nestlé entities.
According to Kommersant, the arguments included the suspension of exports of Russia-produced goods and the absence of plans for production expansion. Nestlé responded that it had received no official requests and continued to meet its obligations.
KS Logistika itself was a small company, generating just RUB 1.6 million in revenue in 2025.
Market sources cited by Kommersant suggested that it might have been representing the interests of other structures, although this remained speculation.
When the decision was eventually taken one month later, however, temporary management was assigned not to KS Logistika but to L.E.V. Management.
There is no transparent public procedure governing the selection of a temporary manager in such cases.
This does not in itself prove improper redistribution of assets. It does, however, create additional uncertainty around property rights and corporate governance for foreign investors.
Taken together, these developments point to a broader transformation in Russia’s wartime economy.
There is no single, universal nationalisation process. Instead, the state is creating several legally distinct mechanisms for intervention.
For a Western owner, the trigger may be confrontation between Russia and the company’s state of origin.
For an operator of critical infrastructure, it may be inadequate protection or insufficiently rapid restoration following an attack.
For other assets, Russian practice already includes court decisions, prosecutorial claims, and separate mechanisms for confiscation or transfer.
The result is that formal ownership increasingly provides less certainty over effective corporate control.
This is not the abolition of private property. It is more accurate to describe it as an increase in the conditionality of control in strategically important sectors of the wartime economy.
An owner may retain legal title while the state reserves broader discretion to intervene whenever it considers security, economic resilience, or foreign-policy retaliation to require it.
Russian precedent also shows that the consequences can vary. Some assets have been returned to their original owners. Others have been sold to Russian investors after a period of temporary management at valuations substantially below pre-war levels.
Reuters estimates that more than $50 billion in foreign assets have been affected by various forms of Russian seizure or state control since 2022.
For European companies, the implications extend well beyond Nestlé or Auchan.
The risk of doing business in Russia is no longer limited to sanctions, reputational costs, currency restrictions, or difficulties repatriating profits.
There is now an additional risk of losing operational control without formally losing ownership.
This is particularly important for companies that remained in Russia after 2022 on the assumption that food production, consumer goods, or other civilian commercial activity would remain relatively insulated from geopolitical confrontation.
The cases of Nestlé and Auchan suggest that such insulation can no longer be assumed.
Since 2022, Moscow has not only used temporary-management mechanisms but has also progressively tightened the rules governing foreign corporate exits through mandatory discounts, payments to the federal budget, and state approval of buyers.
For any future return of European capital to Russia, this creates a separate structural problem: the risk is no longer merely the sanctions environment, but also the predictability of the property-rights and corporate-governance regime itself.
For Ukraine, the process demonstrates that the effectiveness of long-range strikes should not be measured exclusively by the number of damaged processing units or the number of days a refinery remains offline.
Physical damage is only the first layer.
The second is economic: repairs, shortages of equipment, more expensive logistics, reserve inventories, lost production, fuel imports, and additional spending on physical protection.
The third is institutional: new government bodies, lists of critical enterprises, new corporate-security regulation, tax relief for affected supply-chain participants, and legal mechanisms allowing compulsory intervention in asset management.
These costs are harder to identify in satellite imagery, but they may endure far longer than the physical consequences of a single strike.
At the same time, causal claims should not be overstated.
Foreign assets began to be placed under temporary management in 2023, long before the current intensity of Ukrainian strikes.
What changed in 2026 was the emergence of a separate domestic mechanism that explicitly links an enterprise’s wartime resilience to the owner’s ability to retain managerial control.
The key test will be the practical implementation of Decree No. 604.
As of mid-September, the mechanism has been created and an administrative system is being built around it. The central question is whether privately owned Russian enterprises will actually be placed under temporary management specifically because of inadequate anti-drone protection or insufficiently rapid restoration after attacks.
It will also be important to monitor which enterprises are designated as critical infrastructure, what standards of physical protection the authorities consider sufficient, how much of the cost the state is prepared to cover, and whether the new mechanism remains primarily disciplinary in nature.
A second indicator will be the future of Nestlé, Auchan, FM Logistic, and Lemana PRO.
Historical precedent does not justify assuming that temporary management will automatically end in a sale. But previous cases demonstrate that such an outcome is possible.
Particularly important will be who ultimately acquires these assets, on what terms, and at what valuation, should Moscow decide to move beyond temporary management.
Ukrainian long-range strikes are forcing Russia to confront a problem that cannot be solved simply by deploying more air-defence systems.
Russia has a vast territory, dozens of major oil refineries, and thousands of industrial, energy, storage, and logistics facilities. Protecting all of them equally well with military means is effectively impossible.
The response is increasingly becoming a redistribution of responsibility for economic resilience.
Private owners are expected to assume greater responsibility for physical protection, redundancy, and rapid restoration. At the same time, the state reserves the right to determine whether they have done enough and, under certain conditions, to take over operational management of the asset.
In parallel, the older mechanism created for assets from “unfriendly” countries continues to expand.
Nestlé, Auchan, and FM Logistic demonstrate that even major European companies that remained in Russia for years are not insulated from the loss of effective corporate control.
The two regimes should not be conflated legally.
But together they illustrate the same broader development: the war is expanding the boundaries of Russian state intervention in private property and corporate governance.
The strategic effect of a strike on Russian infrastructure is therefore no longer limited to a damaged processing unit or an offline warehouse.
Increasingly, it is also visible in the rules under which Russia’s wartime economy itself is governed.
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