Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree allowing the government to introduce temporary state management over critical infrastructure facilities whose owners fail to ensure adequate security, respond ineffectively to the threat of drone attacks, or fail to restore damaged facilities in a timely manner. Decree No. 604 was signed and published on August 24, 2026.

 

Under the decree, temporary management may be introduced by a decision of the Russian government based on an order from the president. The measure applies not only directly to infrastructure facilities, but also to the assets of the relevant business entity, its securities, stakes in Russian companies, and property rights.

The list of critical infrastructure covered by the decree includes facilities in the fuel and energy sector, industry, communications, utilities, transport and logistics, and the energy sector, including nuclear facilities. It also covers critical and potentially hazardous facilities, as well as infrastructure considered particularly important for national security and economic stability.

One of the grounds explicitly cited in the decree is the ineffectiveness of measures aimed at preventing attacks involving unmanned aerial vehicles. Another ground is the failure to restore, or the untimely restoration of, normal operations following damage to a facility.

Rosimushchestvo, Russia’s Federal Agency for State Property Management, will generally act as the temporary administrator, although the government may appoint another entity. The temporary administrator will exercise the powers of the owner in relation to the transferred assets but will not have the right to dispose of them. Its responsibilities will also include conducting an inventory and ensuring the preservation of the assets.

Russian First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov said the new mechanism would be applied selectively and does not amount to the nationalization of enterprises. According to him, the measure is intended to provide temporary state involvement in management in order to address specific security concerns.

 

The introduction of such a mechanism indicates that Russian authorities increasingly view the threat of drone attacks as a factor capable of directly disrupting the operations of major industrial and logistics companies. In recent months, oil, industrial and warehouse infrastructure has been targeted, while damage to major logistics facilities has created consequences extending beyond individual companies to broader supply chains.

The new decree effectively expands the state’s ability to intervene in the management of privately owned assets when their security is deemed inadequate. At the same time, the measure is formally presented not as a transfer of ownership to the state, but as temporary management that must be terminated by a separate government decision, also issued on the basis of a presidential order.

Experts and business representatives will now closely monitor how the government defines the criteria for inadequate infrastructure protection and under what circumstances the new mechanism is put into practice. Its implementation will determine whether the decree remains primarily a tool for protecting strategic facilities or evolves into a broader mechanism for state intervention in the operations of private companies.

#RUSSIA

#NEWS

24.08.2026 08:21