Good day, everyone, this is Dmitriy Balkovskiy with an update on Covid passports/passes in Russia. According to the latest poll, 60% of Russians are against the introduction of Covid passports, 12% are for them with 29% undecided. What you will repeatedly that on some issues Russians are strongly libertarian.
Federal and regional officials are split on the issue. Federal government is doing its best to have a maximum number of people vaccinated. The government of the Moscow Region, which is not the same as the city of Moscow, plans to distribute QR codes after the second jab. The residents of Sakhalin Island in the Far East will also receive QR code once they get a vaccine.
Yet the governor of Nizhny Novgorod Gleb Nikitin as seen here refused to introduce Covid passports. The governor of Cheliabinsk region, which is in the southern part of the Urals, is against the idea and I quote: “We will not subdivide people by the presence or absence of viral antibodies in their blood”.
Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of the Upper Chamber of Russian Parliament, that is she is a Russian Chuck Shumer, and a heavyweight in Russian politics says and I quote:
“No one has ever said there will be covid passports in Russia. That is an invention in public opinion. Vaccination in Russia is not compulsory, but voluntary. People see this pass as a little red book with stamps, and it will give citizens additional rights and opportunities. No, of course, it’s not going to happen”.
I would bet that it really is not going to happen. Russian public opinion is against it.