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Oil prices were largely unchanged, trading near session lows, after today's DOE inventory data affirmed the latest downbeat API prints from Tuesday afternoon, showing that the crude draw in the last week was even bigger than what API reported (-2.1MM), and far worse than the +1.9MM expected increase, printing at -3.186MM, the biggest draw in 6 weeks.

API

•     Crude -2.1mm (vs +1.0mm last)
•     Gasoline -1.4mm (vs +3.0mm last)
•     Distillates +0.5mm (vs -0.3mm last)
•     Cushing +0.9mm, (vs +0.2mm last)

DOE

•     Crude -3.186mm, the biggest drain in 6 weeks, and far below the exp. +1.915MM
•     Gasoline +382k
•     Distillates -42k
•     Cushing +444K

And visually:

The decrease in commercial crude stockpiles was boosted by another 784,000 barrels withdrawn from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

That increased the overall nationwide crude draw to 3.97 million barrels in the week leading up to Oct. 2. A total of 132.5 million barrels of crude has been taken out of the SPR since late March under a program to release 172 million barrels as part of a relief plan from the International Energy Agency aimed at lowering energy costs.

Meanwhile, Cushing stockpiles rose for the third consecutive week to 24.7 million barrels. That has inventories at the hub at the highest since May and even further away from the 20-million barrel mark generally seen as “tank-bottoms.” 

Some more details from the report: distillate fuel stockpiles were down 42,000 barrels, while gasoline stockpiles rose around 380,000 barrels. Diesel futures are little changed, but gasoline futures appear to be selling off on the news, erasing most of the day’s gains to trade around $3.31 a gallon.

West Coast crude imports surged to the highest level since August 2025. There are a few potential reasons for that, but it’s likely tied to Middle East cargoes that loaded during a recent pause in hostilities. Imports into PADD 5 are now at about 1.6 million barrels a day and shipments last week rose by the most since April 2021.

With diesel spreads not too far from all time highs, and forcing refiners to pick between gasoline and diesel, the all important refinery crude runs rebounded following three weeks of drawdowns. Crude processing increased by 223,000 barrels a day and now are back to the highest on record for this time of the year. 

And speaking of gasoline, Bloomberg suggests that the 1.4mm drop was less bearish than it seems. The additions to stocks occurred exclusively on the East Coast. Meanwhile in a reversal of last week's drop to all time lows, Midwest gasoline stockpiles posted a modest recovery, rising by just over 600K.

On the Gulf Coast, where the bulk of gasoline production occurs, stockpiles are at their lowest since September 2017. 

Digging in a little further: The bulk of the gasoline stockpile additions occurred in the Central Atlantic, which encompasses Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania. The addition was considerably smaller in New England, and stockpiles actually fell in the Lower Atlantic states.

Also worth noting is that among all the talk of a diesel export ban, diesel exports surged 235,000 barrels a day to 1.76 million barrels a day. That’s the highest readout since August, and sets a new seasonal record. Meanwhile, diesel supplies on the East Coast ticked down once again last week. They’re now back where they were in early September and still sitting at the lowest they’ve ever been on record heading into the fall.

On the other side of the table, crude production rose to a new high of about 14 million barrels a day last week, up by 24,000 barrels a day from the previous week, and keeping pace with the recent surge in oil drilling rigs. Rebalancing the weekly numbers against the monthly figures published in the latest Short-Term Energy Outlook added “less than 50,000 barrels a day” to last week’s number. This increase came as one more rig was put into operation, according to Baker Hughes.

Summarizing today's data, via BBG:

• Total crude and products exports soared to the highest since late May, returning to a seasonal record. The increase was driven largely by crude shipments, which climbed to the highest since mid-September. October-loading volumes are expected to trend higher compared with September, as refiners in Asia and Europe sought to lock in US supplies following the mid-September shutdown of Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline. 
• Gasoline stockpiles rose around 380,000 barrels with much of that occurring in the Central Atlantic, which encompasses New York and Pennsylvania. But on the Gulf Coast, where the bulk of gasoline production occurs, stockpiles are at their lowest since September 2017. Gasoline imports remain well below seasonal norms, but they ticked up last week. Those imports are particularly important to the East and West coasts, which have less refining capacity overall. 
• Refinery crude runs rebounded following three weeks of drawdowns. Crude processing increased by 223,000 barrels a day and now are back to the highest on record for this time of the year. Midwest crude processing bounced back big time but is still below last year’s levels. It’s an indication that fall refinery maintenance is heavier than in previous years. 

WTI futures edged lower to trade near session lows of $89.50 even as the EIA data indicated that US crude stockpiles fell 3.2 million barrels. Still, stocks at the key hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, expanded slightly, easing some concerns of glaring physical market tightness. Gasoline stockpiles also rose, though as Will pointed out earlier, that may be less bearish than it appears. 

But while oil dropped, far more concerning is that diesel led the US energy complex higher, rising about 3% on the day to trade at $4.72 a gallon, while diesel crack spreads are now well above where they were when Trump announced the latest emergency release from the Diesel reserve. It’s the kind of futures price that creates serious headaches for anyone who needs to buy diesel for their truck or tractor. 

 

Some ten years after it should have, Europe is finally reaching for the brakes.

According to Bloomberg, the European Commission is preparing so-called safeguard measures to limit imports of Chinese hybrid vehicles, most likely via tariff-rate quotas that slap a levy on anything above a set volume. The cap would be time-limited, and Brussels plans to use hybrids as a "test case" which, if successful, could be replicated in other sectors where the bloc is drowning in Chinese imports.

Our reaction this morning was short and to the point:

EU PREPARES TEMPORARY IMPORT CAP ON CHINESE HYBRID CARS. Just 10 years too late

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 7, 2026

The market liked it anyway: Volkswagen jumped as much as 4.6%, Renault 6.1% and Mercedes 2%, while Goldman's European autos basket (GSXEAUTO) was up 90bps mid-morning, helped by a parallel headline that Germany and France want to water down the EU's combustion-engine rules.

The Loophole Was Always The Hybrids

Why hybrids? Because when Brussels slapped tariffs on Chinese EVs in late 2024, Beijing simply did what any exporter would do and drove around the wall. Chinese hybrids don't face the steep levies applied to EVs, and the result is exactly what you would expect: Chinese-made hybrids now account for a quarter of all hybrid sales in Europe, and one in three plug-in hybrids. Monthly imports of Chinese hybrids into the EU have exploded from 3,800 vehicles in October 2024 to 50,000 in July 2026, a roughly 13-fold surge (per FT data cited by Brussels Signal).

Overall, Chinese brands grabbed a record share of Europe's car market in August: 11.7% of all new-car registrations, up from 7.1% a year earlier (Dataforce), with BYD alone selling 26,007 cars, up 128% YoY. In Germany, where the pain is most acute, Chinese registrations jumped around 90% in August, lifting their share to a record 8% from 4.4% (EY analysis of KBA data).

Regular readers know we have been tracking this flood for a while, from "China Floods Europe With Cheap Cars, Grabs Record Market Share As Domestic Brands Buckle" two weeks ago, to "BYD's EU Invasion Deepens Germany's Auto Industry Crisis", and all the way back to June 2024, when Beijing dangled perks to German automakers to kill the EV tariffs (spoiler: Berlin duly voted against them, only to end up destroying its local manufacturing base).

Meanwhile, In Germany...

The timing of Brussels' epiphany is hardly a coincidence. Just yesterday, German factory orders plunged 10.6% MoM in August, ten times worse than the 1.0% drop expected and among the biggest monthly drops on record.

To be fair, much of the drop was a reversal of July's surge in large orders for aircraft, ships, trains and military vehicles, which tumbled 61.5% after more than doubling the prior month. In other words, the only thing that had been propping up German industrial demand was the debt-fueled arms spending boom (which has sent formerly frugal Germany's debt soaring), and when that took a breather, the floor fell out: domestic orders crashed 17.3% and capital goods orders 15.3%. On a less volatile three-month basis, orders ex-large contracts were down 2.6%, which is "underlying weakness" in Destatis-speak.

And while this morning's industrial production print was a pleasant surprise (+2.0% MoM vs +0.5% expected), it was all construction (+9.3%). Auto production fell 5.4%, after a 9.2% plunge in July, and manufacturing output is still down 0.4% YoY. Nothing says "industrial renaissance" like a factory economy where the only thing growing is cement and tanks.

As we put it last month, when the Bundesbank's Nagel blamed the AfD for scaring off investors:

Nagel Warns Rise of AfD May Deter Investors From Germany So it's not the fact that Germany obliterated its industrial complex by allowing cheap Chinese imports to destroy its manufacturing base? Got it.

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) September 10, 2026

"The Second China Shock"

Even Deutsche Bank, which has rarely been accused of anti-Beijing hysteria, now openly talks of "the second China shock hitting the European manufacturing sector." In a note published this morning ahead of Trade Commissioner Šefcovic's trip to Beijing ("Crunch time for EU-China trade relations", available to pro subs), DB's Marion Muehlberger writes that Germany is the most exposed of the large EU economies:

Back in 2013, China had a 5% market share in global car exports. This has moved to 11% as of 2023 and to 15%, on par with Germany, as of 2025.

And cars are actually the good news: in specialised industrial machinery, the crown jewel of the Mittelstand, China overtook Germany back in 2023, and in general industrial machinery China's share of global exports is now well above Germany's.

Meanwhile, the bilateral trade deficit with China has blown out again to around 2% of EU GDP. Or, as Bloomberg puts it, more than €1 billion... per day.

That said, DB is far from convinced Brussels will actually follow through on a hard stance. The bank expects this week's Šefcovic-Wang meeting to bring "no major breakthrough," with perhaps some Chinese concessions on market access but "little movement on the EU's demand to restrain exports to Europe." The likely next step after the October 15-16 EU summit is an anti-subsidy probe into Chinese plug-in hybrids, with tariffs taking effect "in early 2027 at the earliest." Overall, DB expects EU leaders "to continue their rather minimalist approach."

Translation: Brussels will do just enough to make a headline, and not enough to make Beijing angry. Indeed, per Bloomberg, a key aim is to "keep the cap on hybrids low enough to avoid a retaliatory response from Beijing", which kinda defeats the purpose. China, for its part, already dismissed earlier talk of voluntary export caps last month as a "serious violation" of WTO rules, which is rich coming from the world's champion of subsidized overcapacity.

Bottom Line

Goldman's European trading desk was similarly underwhelmed, noting that the hybrid levy headlines "are not new, repeating what we heard in recent months," and that "the hesitation is the likely backlash from China and the fact that these measures will only briefly limit China's market share gains."

We agree. A temporary, carefully calibrated quota designed not to upset the country flooding your market is certainly not a trade policy - it's just a press release pretending to show Beijing that Brussels can be a tough guy. By the time it takes effect, BYD's Hungarian plant will be churning out "European" cars, and Germany's auto industry, where 140,000 jobs are at risk at VW alone, will have shrunk some more. As we warned a year ago, Germany's industrial core is collapsing; Brussels just noticed.

Better late than never... but only just.

Much more in the full Deutsche Bank "Crunch time for EU-China trade relations" note, available to pro subs.

Last weekend, we noted that the clearest scorecard of the US economic war on Iran is the rial, which cratered to a record 2.7 million per dollar (the slide that we first flagged in "Iran's Deadline Expires Today"... Rial Collapses, and which has only accelerated since). Turns out Tehran has company.

On Wednesday, Iraq devalued its currency by 13%, with the central bank raising the dollar-selling price for the public to 1,520 dinars from roughly 1,320. Per Reuters, the cabinet adopted the new structure on Tuesday, effective Wednesday: the Finance Ministry now sells its oil dollars to the CBI at 1,500, banks get them at 1,510 and the public pays 1,520.

That makes Iraq, as Bloomberg notes, the first Gulf Arab state to devalue since the US-Israel war on Iran began in late February. It probably won't be the last thing in the region to break, but it is the first currency peg to do so, which is a different kind of milestone.

The central bank's official explanation was a masterpiece of the genre: the decision was taken "in view of the current economic and financial conditions, and based on the recommendation of the cabinet," and, rest assured, foreign reserves are "sufficient to finance external trade, settle overseas bank-card transactions and provide cash to travelers." Translation: we have enough dollars, which is why we just made each one cost 15% more.

Below we look at why Baghdad blinked, why the street isn't buying it (yet), and why the timing is stranger than it looks given that Goldman says Gulf oil exports are already back to pre-war levels.

Salaries Or The Dinar: Pick One

Iraq is one of the most oil-dependent economies on the planet: crude sales generate around 90% of government revenue, and those sales go almost entirely out through the Strait of Hormuz. Which is why, from day one of the war, we flagged that Iraq would be the most exposed producer in the Gulf. Back on March 3, as storage filled with nowhere to ship, we tweeted this:

*IRAQ STARTS SHUTTING OIL OUTPUT AT RUMAILA AS STORAGE FILLS

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 3, 2026

A week later it was this:

*IRAQI OIL PRODUCTION REDUCED TO 1.2M B/D: MINISTRY SPOKESMAN *IRAQ ATTEMPTING TO RESUME KIRKUK OIL FLOW: MINISTRY SPOKESMAN

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 10, 2026

Seven months later, the bill has arrived. Bloomberg estimates Iraqi crude exports have averaged only about 1.25 million barrels a day since the start of March, compared with almost 3.5 million last year. SOMO, the state oil marketer, put the country's cumulative oil losses at around $80 billion last month. Even with a recovery, Reuters says exports were just 2.34mb/d in August, versus more than 3.6mb/d before the war.

Meanwhile, the one line item that never shrinks kept on growing. Bloomberg's chief EM economist Ziad Daoud summed it up:

"Every past oil shock has pushed Iraq into trouble. That happened in 2008, 2014, and 2020. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the drying up of oil revenues in 2026 marks another episode. Baghdad had to choose between paying its public-sector salaries and defending the dinar's value — it picked the former."

The math behind that choice is not complicated. Iraq had roughly $100 billion in FX reserves when the war began; by August that had dropped to $80 billion. Public-sector salaries alone cost about $5 billion a month, per Daoud.

Put differently, $20 billion of reserves went out the door in roughly six months, and what's left covers about 16 months of payroll with nothing else, ever, being imported. Hence the devaluation, which, as Iraqi analyst Mohammed al-Saffar told Reuters, is "essentially a fiscal response to the shock to Iraq's oil revenues": it "gives the government more dinars for each dollar of oil revenue, but raises import costs and reduces households' purchasing power."

Some napkin math (approximate): at 1,320, a 6.6 trillion dinar monthly wage bill eats about $5 billion of oil dollars. At 1,520, the same dinar payroll costs just $4.3 billion, a saving of roughly $650-700 million a month, or ~$8 billion a year. That is a 13% real pay cut for every public-sector worker in Iraq, delivered without anyone having to announce a pay cut. Diversification at its finest.

The Street Got There First

Of course, devaluations rarely happen to the market; they usually happen after it. According to Shafaq News, the dollar set six new parallel-market highs in Baghdad this year, from 150,400 dinars per $100 in January to roughly 160,000 in September, and 168,500 per $100 (1,685 per dollar) after the announcement. In other words, even at the new official rate, the black market still prices the dinar about 11% weaker, and local currency traders are already talking about a test of 180,000.

And the real economy is not taking it gracefully. Iraqi News reports Baghdad's Shorja wholesale market was "completely paralyzed" on Wednesday as merchants shuttered stores, distributors suspended deliveries, and food staples in Saladin jumped about 25% almost overnight. One MP has already demanded an emergency session of parliament to reverse the decision. (We'll take the under on that.)

Readers will also recall that Iraq's dollars aren't entirely Iraq's to begin with. As we discussed in "The Hidden Mechanism Behind Washington's Control Of Iraq's Oil Money" just last week, every barrel Iraq sells settles into a CBI account at the New York Fed, and Washington has not been shy about using that tap: in January it threatened to "starve" Iraq of its oil revenue if pro-Iran parties joined the government, and in April it blocked the regular $500 million cash pallets flown to Baghdad. Add the last US troops leaving Iraq on Sept 30 and Bessent's "frank discussion" with Iraq's foreign minister the very next day on "Iraq's progress in demilitarizing Iranian militias," and one can see why holding dinars has lately lost some of its appeal.

The Barrels Came Back... The Dollars Didn't

Here is the twist: the devaluation comes just as the physical oil picture is improving dramatically. In their latest Oil Comment, "Adaptation: Persian Gulf Exports Return to 2025 Level" (available to pro subs), Goldman's commodity team led by Daan Struyven writes:

"We estimate that Persian Gulf oil exports, including estimated "dark exports", have recovered to 23.3mb/d over the last week, in line with their 2025 average, as exports doubled in September. Increased Hormuz exports, including via ship-to-ship transfers, have driven this exports recovery despite the attack on the Saudi East-West pipeline, which disrupted oil flows to Yanbu for nearly two weeks, and the continuing Houthis blockade of Saudi exports via Bab-al-Mandab."

But the recovery is far from evenly shared. Saudi exports "more than doubled in September and rose above their 2025 average, reaching 11.6mb/d," and UAE exports are also above their 2025 levels. Iraq? Just 82% of its 2025 average as of Sep 28, even including Goldman's estimate of dark exports, and that's after a remarkable September. Kuwait and Qatar are stuck around 50%, while Iran shipped essentially nothing by sea.

Struyven repeated the message in the latest edition of Goldman's "Connecting You to GS" desk email (available to pro subs), with Gulf exports now at 23.6mb/d, and a breakdown that shows just how improvised the recovery is: only 7.5mb/d is going through the Strait of Hormuz in the conventional sense, with another 4.5mb/d via the Gulf of Oman, 4.6mb/d out of Saudi Arabia's Yanbu, 2.9mb/d via Fujairah (a bypass hub we said would become the focus back in March) and a token 0.2mb/d through Iraq's own Botas-Ceyhan pipeline to Turkey. The rest is Goldman's 4mb/d estimate of "dark" flows.

Which brings us to the problem for Baghdad: Saudi Arabia has a Red Sea pipeline and the UAE has Fujairah; Iraq has a 0.2mb/d trickle to Ceyhan and a Syria pipeline that is three to four years away, at best. It is reduced to chasing more tankers to get through Hormuz on Iran's terms. And with dated Brent near $120 and Goldman forecasting Brent "moderates to $85/bbl by year-end and to $80 in 2027," the window in which higher prices offset lower volumes is, according to Goldman at least, closing.

Put another way, the barrels are coming back, but the $80 billion in lost revenue and the $20 billion hole in reserves aren't, and the price of oil the draft budget assumes is $58 per barrel, so nobody in Baghdad is counting on a windfall.

A Budget Written In Wishful Thinking

Speaking of the draft budget, the numbers lawmakers shared with Reuters are a work of art. It projects spending of 217 trillion dinars, which Reuters converts to about $166 billion (implying the old ~1,300 rate). At the new 1,520 rate, that same dinar spending is just $143 billion, which is the point. The plan also forecasts a deficit of more than 40 trillion dinars and assumes crude exports of around 4 million barrels per day, including Kurdistan.

For context, that is above pre-war levels, about 70% more than Iraq actually exported in August, and more than three times the average since March. If the Strait doesn't cooperate, the devaluation is simply the plan B that is already in place: when the barrels don't show up, print more dinars per barrel.

And the pain doesn't stop at the Iraqi border. The IMF projects Iraq's $265 billion economy will shrink by almost 7% this year, and Bloomberg notes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar are all expected to contract as well. In the bond market, Goldman's EM credit strategist Mikhail Galkin lists Bahrain among his relative dislikes "with a view of protracted Iran conflict" in his latest "EM Credit: The Big Picture... Heading into Q4" note (also available to pro subs), noting that BHRAIN bonds are down roughly 10% YTD, among the worst in EM.

Bottom Line

Iran's rial collapsed because Washington wanted it to. Iraq's dinar fell because Baghdad chose to let it, which in some ways is the more telling of the two. The Gulf's dollar pegs were built on an assumption that oil, and therefore dollars, would always flow. For seven months, for the most Hormuz-dependent producer in the region, they haven't.

Daoud's framing is the right one: every oil shock eventually lands on Iraq's currency. The question now is whether 1,520 is the new floor or just the first stop. With the parallel market already at 1,685, traders eyeing 1,800, food prices up a quarter overnight and a budget that only works with 4mb/d of exports, we'd bet on the latter, especially if the Monday de-escalation headlines keep reversing by Friday's close. Iraq picked salaries over the dinar this time. The next time, it may not get to pick.

Much more in the full Goldman "Persian Gulf Exports Return to 2025 Level" and the "EM Credit: The Big Picture... Heading into Q4" notes, both available to pro subs.

In a historic first, the Mecca Defense Pact between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey is now in force, according to the allies at an emergency meeting in Riyadh.

It was only signed in August, but soon after it was formalized an all-out war between the Houthis and Saudi coalition in Yemen erupted, with the Ansar Allah movement now increasingly targeting Saudi civilian infrastructure, including airports and energy infrastructure.

The Monday emergency meeting of foreign and defense ministers resulted in the top committee agreeing to deploy Pakistani and Turkish forces to Saudi territory. The pact is modeled on NATO's Article 5 and 'collective defense'. Saudi authorities have argued the kingdom is under direct attack from neighboring Yemen and its Houthi rebels, backed by Tehran.

It marks a quite a dramatic, though somewhat anticipated step, but it remains an open question the degree to which the external troops will directly support the ongoing anti-Houthi operation, which has focused on recapturing the Red Sea coast of late.

"The Committee decided to move immediately to the practical implementation of the collective defense commitments and to take the necessary measures to provide the agreed military forces and capabilities and ensure their rapid deployment in the Kingdom, in accordance with the approved arrangements and the national legislation of the Parties," said a joint statement made public by Pakistan's Foreign Office.

Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Asif sought to clarify in a statement to Geo News while speaking from Riyadh, "The forces of Turkiye and Pakistan are playing a supporting role. We are definitely involved in reconnaissance and such things, but the combat is practically being conducted by Saudi Arabia's own forces, and they are the ones retaking those areas."

Apparently the Mecca pact took on more urgency after claims that the Houthis targeted the Islamic holy site of Mecca last month - something which the Houthis vehemently denied. Pakistan has said when pressed by reporters for details: "The operational details of the actualization of the collective deterrence are a matter of operational confidentiality and may not be made subject of media speculation."

It should be noted that Pakistan has already long had a large and long-running contingent of troops inside the kingdom, and working with the Saudi armed forces. Pakistan's air force has also had fighter jets and support aircraft in the kingdom.

Turkey's role will be much less clear, and Turkish parliament must ultimately authorize sending troops abroad for any kind of large-scale deployment. Unlike Pakistan, the Turks do not have any level of an existent official military footprint in Saudi Arabia.

Emerging reports say the Turks preparing aircraft deployments along with troops...

EXCLUSIVE: Turkey is preparing to deploy troops, air defence systems, pilots, and aircraft to Saudi Arabia. · Turkish forces would defend infrastructure, Riyadh, and the holy cities while avoiding direct intervention in Yemen. With @ragipsoylu https://t.co/1zXwvaXeRo

— Levent Kemal (@leventkemaI) October 6, 2026

A big question remains, with the Mecca pact having been formally triggered, will the situation spiral into Pakistani and Turkish troops actually joining the fighting in Yemen? If so it would have serious implications for the broader region as the conflict spills over borders and into strategic waterways like the Bab al-Mandab Strait.

The Trump administration formally asked Russia for details about the reported death of a laboratory worker at a facility studying pneumonic plague in Siberia's Irkutsk region. Russian authorities said they found no plague in the deceased worker or contacts.

*US PREPARING FORMAL REQUEST TO RUSSIA ON PLAGUE DEATH: WAPO

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 6, 2026

Overnight, the U.S. Embassy reiterated its "Do Not Travel" warning for Russia and urged Americans already in the country to leave immediately.

"The U.S. Embassy is aware of press reports from the Irkutsk region of suspected pneumonic plague resulting in the death of an individual and of associated quarantine measures in, and closures of, hospitals in Irkutsk," the U.S. Embassy in Moscow wrote in an advisory overnight. 

Irkutsk, Russia: The U.S. Embassy is aware of press reports from the Irkutsk region of suspected pneumonic plague resulting in the death of an individual and of associated quarantine measures in, and closures of, hospitals in Irkutsk. We continue to track the situation closely. The U.S. government has limited ability to help U.S. citizens in Russia, especially outside of Moscow. The State Department’s Level 4 Travel Advisory (Do Not Travel) for Russia remains in place and states U.S. citizens currently in Russia should depart immediately. U.S. citizens planning travel to Russia are again strongly advised not to travel to Russia due to risk of wrongful detention and security concerns. More at: https://t.co/rgpoFm6YhH

— TravelGov (@TravelGov) October 6, 2026

The embassy continued, "We continue to track the situation closely. The U.S. government has limited ability to help U.S. citizens in Russia, especially outside of Moscow. U.S. government personnel may face additional restrictions for personal and official travel to specific regions due to health and security concerns." 

Latest reporting:

• Kremlin Says Russians Should Ignore "Rumors" On Possible Plague Outbreak In Siberia
• Russian Lab Worker's Abrupt Death Sparks Plague Crisis Concerns; Trump Team "Monitoring Outbreak"
• Siberian Plague-Lab Death Draws FSB Escort For Ambulances

Russia's health watchdog, Rospotrebnadzor, said Tuesday that 60% of the lab worker's identified contacts had been tested. Officials reported no plague detected among those screened, but testing identified two Covid-19 cases and two rhinovirus infections.

"No other infectious disease pathogens were detected among the contacts," Rospotrebnadzor said in a statement that did not explicitly mention plague.

President Trump said Tuesday he had a call scheduled with Russian President Putin to discuss the health crisis matter. 

Separately, a State Department official told NBC News on Tuesday that the U.S. government spoke with Moscow health officials as early as Friday. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote on X yesterday that it was "working across the U.S. government to assess developments as additional information becomes available."

Dr. Peter McCullough, a Texas cardiologist, who created a "multi-drug protocol" aimed at early treatment of Covid-19, wrote on X: 

More Than 21 Plague Vaccines Are Already in Development: mRNA, saRNA, DNA, Viral Vector, Bacterial Vector, Subunit, and Live-Attenuated. 

Why were governments and military biodefense programs already investing so heavily in plague vaccines before the current plague hysteria erupted? by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH URL TheFocalPoints. 

More Than 21 Plague Vaccines Are Already in Development: mRNA, saRNA, DNA, Viral Vector, Bacterial Vector, Subunit, and Live-Attenuated Why were governments and military biodefense programs already investing so heavily in plague vaccines before the current plague hysteria erupted? by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH URL TheFocalPoints. @NicHulscher @McCulloughFund

— Peter A. McCullough, MD, MPH® (@P_McCulloughMD) October 7, 2026

More from Nicolas Hulscher: 

Israel has already developed an experimental mRNA PLAGUE vaccine. I will NOT be taking it. I’d rather take my chances with doxycycline and its 97% SURVIVAL RATE. https://t.co/UK4ErTyaTJ

— Nicolas Hulscher, MPH (@NicHulscher) October 6, 2026

A Wall Street Journal report on Tuesday evening said the U.S. warned Moscow that its failure to disclose details about the lab worker death violates international health obligations.