Russia's war economy strains under a widening fuel crisis — rationing across nearly all regions and refinery attrition forcing broader controls — while century-low EU trade cements decoupling; Iran-related fronts stay contained on the US axis even as the regional war simmers, and drone warfare escalation drives defense-tech procurement on both sides.

This is a confirmation/escalation-stage event, not a rumor. Independent fact-checking (CNN, American Geographical Society) confirms nearly all of Russia's 83 regions face gasoline shortages or rationing — far broader than the analysts' Moscow-centric framing. Three analysts (economist [sector weight 1.00], geopolitician [1.00], political) converge on persistence, differing only on scope/label; I merge them because they describe one story. The physical driver is decisive: refinery repair timelines run months while the drone campaign is ongoing, so a 45-day persistence window is near-certain. Putin's profile (low tolerance for economic self-harm, fast emergency reactions when regime stability is threatened) makes formal escalation — export bans, price controls — the rational response, and Russia has repeatedly used gasoline export bans historically. The Skeptic scored these 67-74 and worried about the 'emergency controls' label; I resolve this by anchoring on the well-evidenced persistence claim rather than the contested scope wording. My economics track record runs slightly hot (over by ~13pp), but here the physical evidence base overrides that caution, so I hold at 0.85 rather than compressing further.