On April 11, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin signed a decree on the procedure of processing and using special digital passes in the city. The decision to introduce a special digital pass system to enforce coronavirus lockdown rules in the Russian capital was announced on April 10. Soon, digital passes will become mandatory for all residents of Moscow.
According to the Sobyanin decree, residents will be able to start getting digital passes on April 13, while on April 15 they will become mandatory for trips in Moscow and the region by personal and public transport.
At the current stage of the digital pass system launch, people on foot still can move across the city without passes. However, they still have to comply with the established rules and restrictions of the so-called ‘self-isolation regime’.
April 11 situation in Russia
Currently, there are 3 categories of digital passes:
On April 10, Moscow authorities announced that they were planning to gradually introduce the digital pass system. Therefore, it’s expected that the limitations of the freedom of movement for residents traveling on foot will be also introduced soon.
According to reports in Russian media, servers of the IT company involved in the Moscow digital pass system development and support are located in the European Union. If this is confirmed, this move will be another public federation of the Russian federal law.
It should be noted that the state of emergency has not been introduced in Moscow yet. Therefore, under the Russian constitution, local authorities have no official right to limit freedoms of the residents. Despite this, the Sobyanin team is employing its levers of administrative pressure to push forward the idea of the digitally-enforced ‘self-isolation’ regime that in fact is the regime of the administrative limitations of residents’ legal rights.
On April 11, Moscow authorities also reinforced security checkpoints at the entrances to the city. Media reports say that they are working to ‘unofficially’ ban a part of people to enter the city. This move raised serious concerns among the local population, which is already disgruntled by the Sobyanin-style ‘self-isolation’ regime. By limiting the freedom of people to enter the city and enforcing the digital pass system for Moscow residents, local authorities are in fact isolating the Russian capital from the rest of the country.
Right now, the official media says that these limitations are introduced for the period until April 30 only. However, the practice around the world demonstrates that such ‘temporary measures’ could last much longer than it’s announced initially.
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