Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said on 10 October that Russia would lift its diesel export restrictions early, with the home market "fully supplied"1. He set exports at 300,000 tonnes in October, up to 500,000 in November and up to 1 million in December, then up to 3 million tonnes a month.
Eleven days earlier the government had done the opposite. On 29 September it rolled the ban on diesel exports by producers on to 31 October, citing a stable domestic fuel market and the autumn harvest2. That roll-over followed an August extension to the end of September, and Novak himself had ordered a study in July into cutting the diesel export quota.
Putin said in late September, Interfax reported, that diesel would not return to world markets while Western sanctions stood. Within a fortnight Moscow had reversed, in effect supplying its half of the 9 October Trump-Putin call. Trump's own account on Truth Social, as paraphrased by Reuters, set out the same monthly steps and tied the top volume to the state of Russian refineries3. That condition hands the schedule to the plants Ukraine's drones have spent the year hitting.
