UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 14, 2020. The telecom company MegaFon now offers its customers unlimited access to vital online services, which means you can communicate via messengers and use services without spending your prepaid traffic in times of self-isolation. Customers can now enjoy unlimited access to WhatsApp, Viber, eMotion, Facebook Messenger, TamTam, Snapchat, Skype, Gmail, Yandex.Mail, and Mail.ru. No traffic will be charged for using these services, MegaFon Ural’s PR Group reports. You can also use the food delivery services Delivery Club and Yandex.Eda, access Sbermarket, shop at

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 14, 2020. 212 passengers on Ural Airlines’ special-purpose Thailand-Krasnoyarsk flight got back to Russia. Flight U6 3620 for residents of Krasnoyarsk and Krasnoyarsk Territory who were left behind in Thailand left Bangkok on April 12. The flight landed in Krasnoyarsk’s Dmitri Hvorostovsky Airport at 00:10 AM on April 13. The flight was operated in accordance with Rosaviation’s schedule and with assistance from the Russian Federation Embassy in Thailand, Ural Airlines’ press service reports. The airline reports they keep in touch with the federal HQ and are prepared

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 14, 2020. EVRAZ Nizhniy Tagil Integrated Metallurgical Plant (EVRAZ NTMK) developed a new design for the rail wheel EV002 used in freight railcars. The wheel with improved central load is meant for railcars used in Russia and the CIS member states. EV002 is special in that it has enhanced operational parameters, weighs less than its regular counterparts, and can work with central load of up to 30,000 kg. All of this increases the wheel’s lifespan and allows it to handle more cargo. The new, improved parameters stem from a completely new shape of the wheel disk that

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 14, 2020. The housing developer Brusnika transferred its customer service, management of construction sites, and office and sales workers online due to current epidemiological restrictions. All meetings on the company’s official calendar will now take place as video and conference calls. To ensure this, the company’s IT infrastructure provided every employee working from home with the necessary software and appliances. The developer’s various departments synchronize their performance using a planning service (a cloud platform where every member can see the tasks

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, April 14, 2020. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) keeps co-funding MMK Industrial Park’s project as part of its support program for small and medium enterprises, the company’s press service reports. MMK offers funding to the candidates with the best proposal for a new business or for an expansion of an existing production facility. The co-funding part amounts to as much as 30% of the project’s total cost (RUB 15 million max.) In 2019, two residents of MMK Industrial Park used this co-funding option and received RUB 7.5 million altogether. This year, the

UrBC, Moscow, April 13, 2020. Russia’s Finance Ministry purchased a shareholding in Sberbank for RUB 2.13943571 trillion (RUB 189.44 per share), the ministry’s website states. Now in accordance with Article 1 of Federal Law No. 50-FZ, dated 18 March 2020, ‘On the Acquisition by the Government of the Russian Federation of Ordinary Shares of Public Joint-Stock Company Sberbank of Russia from the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and on Invalidating Certain Provisions of Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation’, 11,293,474,000 ordinary shares were purchased from Sberbank (a 50% equity

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 13, 2020. Sverdlovsk Region’s government debt amounted to RUB 86.1878 billion on April 1, 2020, Sverdlovsk Region’s Finance Ministry reports. Now as of January 1, 2020, the figure was RUB 77,187,791,800. This means the constituency’s debt rose by over RUB 9 billion in the first quarter of 2020.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 13, 2020. SKB-Bank’s card holders will now be able to take out cash and put money into their accounts using Alfa-Bank’s ATMs - and this on the same terms as in the case of SKB-Bank’s own machines. According to the bank’s press service, this was made possible due to a cooperation agreement the two banks have signed. ‘You can top up your bank account or take some cash out in every part of Russia where our ATMs are available. This should prove particularly handy for the customers located in areas where SKB-Bank’s ATMs are not so easy to find within the next-door range.

UrBC, Moscow, April 13, 2020. The telecom company MegaFon expanded its content delivery network by launching its own solution Multi-CDN; this sped up the start of the video playing and reduced the time lags in TV broadcasts for viewers in remote parts of the country. According to the company’s press service, their online video and the digital television service MegaFon TV traffic rose by 30% in the last few weeks. ‘In addition to its existing content delivery options represented by seventeen data centers, MegaFon is also beginning to use its own caching platform Multi-CDN (total traffic

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 13, 2020. NEYVA Bank’s financial performance in the year 2019 was given a clean audit opinion at the end of an independent audit procedure. According to the bank’s press service, the audit was carried out by the independent auditor Yekaterinburg Audit Center in full accordance with the current international standards. The auditor is among Russia’s largest auditing bodies, according to RAEX, and has been on the market since 1992. Chairman of the Board at NEYVA Bank Konstantin Levushkin says they had to engage in large-scale preparatory work to get all the financial

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 13, 2020. Ural Airlines proved the airline with the largest number of flight-hours per day operated on Airbus A320neo aircraft in 2019. According to the company’s press service, Airbus data indicate that the total amount comes to over 14 hours a day. ‘This means the airline operates this family of aircraft more efficiently than any other air carrier in the world,’ the airline representatives say. Now Ural Airlines obtained four planes from the Airbus A320neo family (three A320neo ones and one A321neo one) in the second half of 2019 and yet another А321neo unit in

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, April 10, 2020. Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Alexei Teksler went into self-isolation in his office; he’ll have to spend the next few days there after it transpired he came in close contact with someone who tested positive for the novel coronavirus; the person in question is the governor’s press secretary Sergey Zyus. Governor Teksler informed the press about the new format he’ll be working in. The governor doesn’t leave his office now and does all the work through video conferencing. The reporters were addressed in the same (online) manner. According to preliminary bits

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 10, 2020. Three more people in Sverdlovsk Region have tested positive for COVID-19 on April 8-9, 2020, the local special-purpose unit reports. This means the total number of patients in the area comes to 59 people. In Russia on the whole, 1,459 people have tested positive in fifty different federal constituencies in the last twenty-four hours. The total number of confirmed cases currently comes to 10,131. 13 people have died in the last twenty-four hours and 76 people have died all in all so far; 118 people have recovered in the last twenty-four hours and 698 people

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, April 10, 2020. The management of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) issued a commentary on the company’s Steps to Reduce the Spread of COVID-19 Act, MMK’s press service reports. According to the company’s Director-General Pavel Shilyayev, the goal is to inform each and every worker of their employer’s stance on the matter. MMK employees are now in charge of watching their health and must keep checking for symptoms, fever, and so on. ‘Given all this, an employee must act accordingly in terms of whether to go to work or to stay at home and contact medical authorities.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 10, 2020. A thermal camera appliance has been installed at EVRAZ Holding’s Raspadskaya Coal Company’s Raspadskaya Mine; the appliance allows for automatic, remote detection of potential infection-carriers, EVRAZ Holding’s press service reports. The thermal camera has been placed at the office building entrance. The high-resolution camera works in combination with the software that sends data to control panel online. The system can scan an unlimited number of people at the same time, and in case someone with a fever gets detected, a sound and color alarm gets sent to

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 10, 2020. Ural Airline’s net profit (calculated in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards) rose by 5.4 times in 2019 compared with 2018 and reached RUB 2.092 billion, the air carrier’s press service reports. The airline’s revenues increased by 8.8% and amounted to RUB 88.48 billion, including the RUB 68.156 billion stemming from operating scheduled flights (compared with RUB 62.562 billion in 2018). The amount includes RUB 31.668 billion coming from domestic air travel and RUB 36.488 billion coming from international air travel. The cost of revenue went up

UrBC, Moscow, April 9, 2020. Prospective customers’ trust is one of the key factors affecting KORTROS Group’s resistance to crisis, the Group’s President Veniamin Golubitsky said at a press conference in Moscow today when commenting on the building industry’s situation in times of the novel coronavirus. ‘We have never missed a single commissioning deadline in District Akademicheskiy, we have never let any would-be home owner down. When you work on a housing project as large as this one, when you put up a building after building and people keep moving in and everyone sees this, you earn your

UrBC, Moscow, April 9, 2020. All of KORTROS Group’s construction sites keep working, the Group’s President Veniamin Golubitsky said at a press conference in Moscow today when commenting on the building industry’s situation in times of the novel coronavirus. ‘Not a single site has stopped, and all the jobs are being completed at the same speed as before,’ Golubitsky said. According to Golubitsky, some of the buildings will be ready ahead of schedule, including some projects in Saint Petersburg and Yekaterinburg’s District Akademicheskiy. KORTROS Group’s President also added that extra steps

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 9, 2020. Russia’s Federal Service for Intellectual Property has granted EVRAZ Nizhniy Tagil Integrated Metallurgical Plant (EVRAZ NTMK) five inventors’ patents since the start of 2020. The patents have to do with wheel band production, blast furnace and oxygen converter technologies, and ways to reduce environmental impact. All the patented technologies are now used at the plant. According to EVRAZ Holding Ural’s Corporate Communications Center, three patents are directly related to the technology for making cast iron at the plant’s new Blast Furnace 7. ‘Our

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, April 9, 2020. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) directed RUB 117 million to sports and healthcare programs (including the upkeep of Metallurg-Magnitogorsk Sports Club) last year. MMK Group spent around RUB 130 million on such projects in 2019 altogether, MMK’s Information & PR Department reports. Russia’s largest metallurgical enterprise pays special attention to sports, physical culture, and promotion of a healthier lifestyle, so MMK sees encouraging its workers to do sports on a regular basis as one of its CSR priorities. ‘Metallurg-Magnitogorsk Sports Club,