UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 3, 2020. Ural Airlines are going to take Russian nationals stuck in India because of the novel coronavirus pandemic restrictions back to Russia. According to the company’s press service, Ural Airlines supported the Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviatsiya)’s initiative to coordinate the necessary evacuation flights. The airline worked in partnership with Rosaviatsiya, Russia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry, and the Russian Federation Embassy in Delhi to be granted the permission to operate the flights. ‘Passengers on the embassy’s list with tickets for Ural Airlines

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 2, 2020. Ural Airlines will be launching new Moscow-Gorno-Altaysk and Yekaterinburg-Gorno-Altaysk flights this summer, the air carrier’s press service reports. Flights from Moscow to Gorno-Altaysk will be available daily starting May 31; flights from Yekaterinburg to Gorno-Altaysk will be operated every Monday and Friday starting June 1. Prices start from RUB 6,014 (one way) and from RUB 12,028 (there and back) for flight U6 1351/1352 (Moscow(Domodedovo)-Gorno-Altaysk) and from RUB 6,775 (one way) and RUB 12,050 (there and back) for flight U6 1353/1354

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 2, 2020. SKB-Bank enabled Samsung Pay for its Visa card holders; the service is available wherever contactless/magnetic stripe payments work, thanks to Samsung MST (Magnetic Secure Transmission). According to SKB-Bank’s press service, you can make purchases using your smartphone or Samsung mobile devices. Samsung Pay also lets you pay from your smartphone when shopping at online stores and their mobile app versions; you can also use the service to send and receive money. To use the service, you need to register your Visa card with Samsung Pay. The payment itself is

UrBC, Moscow, April 2, 2020. Russia’s State Duma adopted a draft bill on introducing ‘a loan repayment holiday’ for sole traders and small and medium enterprises in the third and final reading this week. This means borrowers can take a break from repaying the principal debt and the interest for a few months, Prime reports. Under the terms of the bill, businesspeople can apply for a loan repayment break with their bank through September 30, 2020. The ‘repayment holiday’ could last up to six months. Private individuals are eligible to apply for the six-month ‘repayment holiday’ as well. In

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, April 2, 2020. MMK Group’s MMK-METIZ set up a special-purpose unit to help prevent the spread of coronavirus; the unit gets chaired by Director Alexander Mukhin. Ad hoc work teams, coordinated by department heads, have also been set up in every division, and people have been assigned who will collect and present all the relevant data on COVID-19 and enforce the measures to prevent it. ‘All our drivers as well as employees arriving from outside of Magnitogorsk have to undergo medical examination to check if they have any symptoms prior to entering the site. Our workers get

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 2, 2020. EVRAZ Holding’s People’s Correspondent Video Project got nearly 1.5 million views in the last six weeks, EVRAZ Holding Ural’s Corporate Communications Center’s PR Department reports. ‘The project took off in the summer of 2019. EVRAZ employees submitted videos featuring their native towns’ favorite locations, with twelve young people then going to four places in Siberia and the Urals as project reporters and show hosts. They went to five of EVRAZ Holding’s member enterprises: EVRAZ West-Siberian Metallurgical Plant in Novokuznetsk, EVRAZ Nizhniy Tagil

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 1, 2020. 43% of Yekaterinburg-based respondents said in a survey that they kept working as usual at their workplaces throughout the week; 27% of those surveyed work from home. Only 19% of Yekaterinburg residents said their employer really did give them a week off, zarplata.ru’s recent survey findings indicate. ’51% of respondents say they were promised to get their pay in full, while 9% expect to get paid less than usual. 13% of those who did get a week off said this was an unpaid leave situation; 27% simply don’t even know what course of action their employer will

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 1, 2020. Mayor of Yekaterinburg Alexander Vysokinsky called for the development of the city’s general construction plan for 2021-2041, the town council’s press service reports. Following the public hearings on the general construction plan, the authorities decided to shift the strategic planning timeframe from 2035 to 2041 and to keep working on a revised version of the plan. City planners, architects, investors, and members of the general public will all contribute to the discussion on the project, which is meant to be a product of social consensus and to account

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 1, 2020. Nine more people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Sverdlovsk Region; the total number of patients thus reached 33, стопкоронавирус.рф reports. 500 new cases of COVID-19 have been registered in Russia in the last twenty-four hours; total number of cases inside the country currently comes to 2,337.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 1, 2020. KORTROS Group’s housing developer RSG-Akademicheskoye, which keeps putting up Yekaterinburg’s District Akademicheskiy within the framework of a comprehensive area development project, extended the deadline for its mortgage-from-1.9%-a-year offer till the end of April, the company’s press service reports. The special offer comes from RSG-Akademicheskoye and Metcombank and applies to a range of newly commissioned apartment buildings in District Akademicheskiy’s Preobrazhensky Quarter (Blocks 05, 06, 07, and 08) and Blizky Quarter (26.1.1 and 26.2). ‘The

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, April 1, 2020. The Board of Directors at ChelPipe Group (which currently comprises three independent directors) and BOD Chair Andrei Komarov held an extraordinary meeting to consider and adopt a concept for the development of a risk management system, the company’s press service reports. The concept focuses on further improvements in the risk management system in full compliance with the best global practices and sets out a risk matrix for the year 2020, with all the potential adjustments, in order to help the business remain stable even on a volatile market and during a

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 31, 2020. Mayor of Yekaterinburg Alexander Vysokinsky held a meeting with heads of departments in charge of preventing the spread of COVID-19 in town, the town council’s press service reports. Mayor Vysokinsky asked for a number of preventive steps to be taken. For one, Vysokinsky stressed the importance of keeping on sanitizing apartment buildings, means of urban transit, and Yekaterinburg Underground and pointed out the need to clean the roads and pavements with vacuums and special-purpose vehicles. Vysokinsky warned that, should the building residents complain of

UrBC, Moscow, March 31, 2020. Everyone living in Moscow and Moscow Region must go into self-isolation in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19; the executive decrees to this effect were issued by Mayor of Moscow Sergey Sobyanin and Governor of Moscow Region Andrei Vorobyev, TASS reports. This means, among other things, that people may only leave their home in order to seek medical assistance or in case of a life/health emergency. They can also go to work if their work is declared essential, go out to get groceries in the nearest supermarket/store, go to a drugstore, or walk their dogs. The

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 31, 2020. RosSet’s Federal Grid Company United Energy Systems renovated all of the commutation appliances at its 220-kV Orbita Substation in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District – Yugra. The substation now has a totally new set of 110-kV switches, which ensures a more reliable power supply to end users in Nizhnevartovsk and nearby areas, including Rosneft’s member enterprises. The replacements cost RUB 235 million to complete, FGC UES’s PR & GR Department reports. ‘The high-voltage switches are the key commutation appliances the substation runs on. They block the

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, March 31, 2020. The management of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) suggested setting up a special-purpose donations account to support seniors in the COVID-19 pandemic, MMK’s Information & PR Department reports. ‘Older people are known to be a higher risk group as far as the novel type of coronavirus is concerned. Donations accumulated in the account will be directed to supporting the elderly and to preventing the spread of COVID-19 among the seniors of Magnitogorsk. First and foremost, aid will be provided to the residents of Magnitogorsk who are now in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 31, 2020. The telecom company MegaFon now allows customers over 65 to make calls/send text messages even if they have no money in their account or have a negative account balance, MegaFon Ural’s press service reports. ‘This should prove particularly handy for those who have to self-isolate at the moment. All you have to do is contact MegaFon’s call center and we’ll help you select one of the options that will let you stay connected. For one, we can advance you anything up to RUB 3,000 in your phone account (you can pay later, commission-free). The offer applies to

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 30, 2020. ChelPipe Group’s Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (PNTZ) and Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant (ChelPipe) now use a mobile app to keep track of the number of manufactured pipes automatically; the solution relies on an object recognition tool, the Group’s press service reports. The new IT solution boosts productivity by making the inspection engineers’ work more efficient and by eliminating miscounting issues with piles and packs of pipes. The pipe-recognition algorithm that meets all the necessary tech requirements was designed through lengthy, detailed analysis of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 30, 2020. EVRAZ Nizhniy Tagil Integrated Metallurgical Plant (EVRAZ NTMK) produced its first 400,000 kg of the unique 20P channel bars with exceptional impact strength even in extremely low temperatures (-60°С), EVRAZ Holding Ural’s Corporate Communications Center reports. ‘These 20P channel bars have been made at the plant’s Heavy Mill Department and will be used for a winter-time living facility in Russia’s Vostok Station in the Antarctic, that is, in an extreme climatic environment. The bars have been delivered by EVRAZ Metal Inprom’s Moscow branch,’ the company

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 30, 2020. NEYVA Bank will operate as usual on March 30-April 5; the bank’s offline branches will be open during the usual working hours, the bank’s press service reports. ‘Dear customers, Under the Russian Federation President V.V. Putin’s decree, organizations in the banking and finance sector are classified as essential businesses, which means NEYVA Bank will keep working as usual; our offline branches will be open during the usual working hours, and all payments will get processed as usual. For more information on our working hours, please visit the bank’s

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 30, 2020. DeloBank will be charging its customers no fees or commissions for making payments to contractors banking with other banks effective March 27. According to the bank’s press service, all payments will remain commission-free throughout April. DeloBank’s customers with the Major League Package also get their settlement account administered free of charge in April. ‘No matter what, DeloBank keeps operating as usual. As always, all of the bank’s services are available online. Our business customers can make any payments, sign up for services, submit reports,