Talk:Time in Russia

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—Yamara ✉  16:31, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Most timezones in the world?
This article claims that the 11 time zones Russia has are more than any other country in the world. However, the article on time zones claims that France also has 11 time zones. So I'd think that one of the two must be wrong. Depending on whether France really has 11 time zones (which I doubt, counting I only find 10 but that's for the time zone talk page), one of the 2 articles should be adjusted imo.Skysmurf (talk) 03:45, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Update: according to Time zones by country France actually has 12 time zones, which contradicts this article as well as Time zone. Skysmurf (talk) 03:46, 29 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Maybe we should add a clarifier that says something like "Russia has the most time zones of a country if we exclude outlying territories" because that part of it, at least, is true. ZanderSchubert (talk) 10:12, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * How about "conti n guous time zones"?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 15:22, January 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * You probably mean contiguous but it's a good point nonetheless. Perhaps the note that was added should have an additional remark stating that Russia has (indeed) more contiguous time zones than any other country. Skysmurf (talk) 16:10, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Yup, that's exactly what I meant; sorry for the typo. At any rate, saying that "France has twelve time zones" is something a cheap tabloid would say for a shock value, not an encyclopedia :)  Adding "with outlying territories" to "France" solves that problem; or we could go with the "contiguous" bit&mdash;I personally don't have a preference.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 16:25, January 29, 2010 (UTC)

Additionally, I have edited time zone to reflect this change and if desired I can create the article "Time in France", which doesn't exist yet. Skysmurf (talk) 16:15, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

May I suggest the following: in the introduction we change "there are 11 time zones in Russia" to "there are 11 contiguous (italics used only here on the talk page!) time zones in Russia" and in the footnote we add "but not all of those are contiguous". I think this would be accurate as well as anti-cheap-taboid :-) Skysmurf (talk) 17:00, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I think I understand what you are proposing (and generally agree with it), but I think you mistyped the fragment that is supposed to go in the footnote (it sounds like the time zones are and are not contiguous at the same time). Could you, please, re-phrase?—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:37, January 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, I think I see the flaw you spotted. How about this for the footnote: If external territories are included, France and its territories use twelve time zones in total, but those do not form one contiguous sequence. or something along those lines, feel free to improve on this if necessary. I won't make the actual edit until the exact phrase has been approved here ;-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Skysmurf (talk • contribs) 17:50, 29 January 2010 (UTC)
 * I can't "approve" it all on my own, but for the record, this wording is fine by me. And then, of course, there is an issue with the fact that while the time zones in Russia are contiguous, its territory is not :)  Probably doesn't matter that much for the purpose of this article, though.  Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 19:47, January 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * You're right, we probably shouldn't drag everything in that's remotely related :-)

I'll give it a few days, then I'll make the change if nobody objects.Skysmurf (talk) 00:16, 30 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Don't know if this is still debated, but since this year's time reform the US has the same number of "contiguous time zones" as Russia, namely 9 (UTC-12 to UTC-4). The only record Russia continues to hold would be "number of timezones within a contiguous territory", which is 8, more than the contiguous US's 5 time zones. Still worthy of note IMO, however.--Roentgenium111 (talk) 18:01, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Tz database
For an encyclopedia is would be nicer to show the tz based zones on a map too. Maybe in lighter color. TimeCurrency (talk) 04:47, 8 March 2010 (UTC)

URGENT UPDATE
The article must be updated to reflect the new time zones as the first map in the article suggests.  A.h. king  • Talk to me!  09:31, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

This whole thing is a mess. Someone does not understand what UTC is. UTC is the old GMT or Greenwich Mean Time, which is the time we (in Europe at least), use in the winter. On the last Saturday in March in Europe, the clocks go forward by one hour. Given that Moscow, for example, is three hours ahead of London at ALL times of the year, all the UTC figures quoted are completely incorrect. As an example, Kaliningrad is currently (1st April 2010 - and this is no joke - time is not a matter to joke about) UTC+3 and Moscow is UTC+4. A simple check with Google will confirm this!Garstonboy (talk) 18:10, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually it's the other way around: the current terminology is UTC rather than GMT. The only problem with the time zone listings on the page is that it doesn't list the times that zones use during daylight saving time. That's it. Otherwise, the page is comparable to other time zone related pages on Wikipedia. I am adding them as we speak. ZanderSchubert (talk) 04:40, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

That's what I said! UTC is the old GMT or Greenwich Mean Time old in this case meaning former. Anyway, the whole thing is still confusing, because European Russia (ie the area west of the Urals) does conform to daylight saving time, and this should be made clear.Garstonboy (talk) 22:15, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Template talk:Time zones of Russia
There is a discussion about navbox design, its appearance and colors. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 21:25, 7 June 2010 (UTC)

Using data from tz database
Category:Time_in_Russia now has stubs for the 16 tz database zones located in Russia. These zones are also listed at Time in Russia.

Template:RussiaTimeZone could maybe make use of the utc offsets stored in Template:Time zone/utc offset.

DST offsets would theoretically need to be added, but since Russia stops DST, simply something like

|kaliningrad oblast=USZ1/USZ1S (UTC+2/+3) replace with


 * kaliningrad oblast=Europe/Kaliningrad

can be done and the templates using Template:RussiaTimeZone be adjusted. Or a new in-between template is created to deliver content for display, i.e. one for mapping divisions to tz zones and one for display.

Additionally would be nice if more references could be added to the stubs. Time in Russia (talk) 17:04, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
 * You should discuss these issues at the templates' talk pages, not here. ZanderSchubert (talk) 00:06, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Most of Russia, including blah-blah-blah, uses decree time, which means it lies one hour ahead of standard time for the corresponding time zone
All articles about time zones were fitted with such remark, most still contain this disinformation. If this were true, then clocks in Moscow would show MSK+01, i.e. UTC+04. But indeed, there is UTC+03 in Moscow still. Actually, the so named decree time was merely an episode of moving MSK from UTC+02 to UTC+03 only of historical interest, because was subsequently overridden by moving time zone boundaries eastward in 1990s, i.e. many regions switched one hour back. This was not resulted in a permanent time keeping system atop of the standard time as Summer Time was. I think that references to it must be purged from all time zone articles, except the history section in Moscow Time.

This came in mid-2009 apparently as a translation from no.wiki; they also should be alerted. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 07:43, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Issues with tz time zone infos
Two zones cover area that did not observe the same rule set since 1970, all now using Omsk Time:
 * Asia/Omsk
 * Omsk Oblast
 * Altai Krai, Altai Republic changed from UTC+07 to UTC+06 on May 28, 1995
 * Asia/Novosibirsk
 * Novosibirsk Oblast changed from UTC+07 to UTC+06 on May 23, 1993,
 * Tomsk Oblast changed from UTC+07 to UTC+06 on May 1, 2002.

Questions: Was it really May 1, 2002? The articles mentions 17 April. When did Omsk Oblast change? Time in Russia (talk) 12:55, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It seems like 17 April was the date when the time zone change was decreed, and the actual change was on 1 May. According to tz database, Omsk switched from +5 to +6 on 19 January 1992. ZanderSchubert (talk) 22:12, 19 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I confirm that. Russian laws are often decreed on one date but do not take effect until some later date. The effective date of this change was indeed May 1. As for the other two, I can't seem to find a source at the moment, but I'll keep looking.—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); February 21, 2011; 16:42 (UTC)
 * The date for the Novosibirsk Oblast switch came from the database itself, but they seemed to have gotten it from word of mouth rather than a specific news source. ZanderSchubert (talk) 22:20, 21 February 2011 (UTC)

Irkutsk Time since March 2011
What should we call the time zone four hours ahead of Moscow now (i.e. UTC+08, covering only Buryatia)? Ulan-Ude Time? Does Buryatia even observe UTC+09, or did it remain on UTC+08 like the Yakutsk Oblast? ZanderSchubert (talk) 09:13, 27 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Buryatia will observe UTC+9, most likely it will be called Ulan-Ude Time, but it is not yet declared officially. (And probably it won't ever be, since it's unlikely that one-region time zone will exist for too long.)
 * There is no Yakutsk Oblast in Russia. There is the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), and its territory belongs to three different time zones: UTC+10 through UTC+12. Hellerick (talk) 10:54, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Slip of the tongue: I meant Irkutsk Oblast. ^.^ For now, I'll have "Ulan-Ude Time" link to the Irkutsk Time article, and just reword the table. ZanderSchubert (talk) 00:32, 28 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The tz database will be using the nomenclature "Buryatia Time" (BURT/BURST) in their 2011e update on 1 April 2011, so I've created that article and am working on updating the other supporting templates/articles as necessary. It also has Irkutsk moving its designation to KRAT/KRAST, so the Irkutsk Time article is now an historical relic.  Although it's always possible the Russian government or popular usage could differ from this in the future, this nomenclature is rather official enough for now, and serves to disambiguate the confusing cases.  --Tim Parenti (talk) 18:43, 30 March 2011 (UTC)


 * With the discussion at User talk:Tim Parenti/Archives/2011, it seems the Russian government decided not to allow the Irkutsk Oblast to transition from IRKT (UTC+8) to YAKST (UTC+7+1) and instead they transitioned to IRKST (UTC+8+1) as normal. I've alerted the folks at the tz database and they'll be holding off on any Russia-related changes for now until things clear up.  In short, it seems the time in Irkutsk can still be called "Irkutsk Time" for now.  (Yay.)  --Tim Parenti (talk) 20:15, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

New change again
The article will need a big update: http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-28423647 94.113.74.24 (talk) 09:41, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Srednekolymsk Time
The Russians have decided to create a time zone for a few thousand people in the north east that we are calling "Srednekolymsk Time", named after Srednekolymsk (the largest village in the area). This name appears to have been first introduced on Wikipedia by User:YLSS here.

I have looked online and I have been able to get an abbreviation out of the Tz database - see ; in their system it is "Asia/Srednekolymsk". But I've yet to see evidence that "Srednekolymsk Time" is the standard name. Is it possible to find a cite for this please? Thanks, Kahastok talk 11:51, 26 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Also, sources like this seem to suggest that the eastern Kuril Islands are on the same time as Srednekolymsk (thus different from Sakhalin and Kamchatka).  Is this correct? Kahastok talk 12:02, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * No, I'm not the original inventor ;) I first saw this at Часовые пояса России, and after googling "SRET" I found this, so I labelled it like that at en.wp. FYI, at ru.wp the article on Magadan Time has now been renamed to ru:Среднеколымское время (but I'm not sure if that was the right thing to do).
 * WRT Kurils, ru:Время в России has: "(МСК+7, ... UTC+10): ... Сахалинская область (кроме Северо-Курильского района) ...; (МСК+8, ... UTC+11): ... Сахалинская область (Северо-Курильский район)", i.e. UTC+10: Sakhalin Oblast (except North Kuril District); UTC+11: Sakhalin Oblast (Noth Kuril District only). YLSS (talk) 12:26, 26 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I thought the Tz database is the standard, published on http://www.iana.org/time-zones . It contains (in the Europe file):

&#x23; From Tim Parenti (2014-07-06), per Alexander Krivenyshev (2014-07-02): &#x23; Magadan Oblast is moving from UTC+12 to UTC+10 on 2014-10-26; however, &#x23; several districts of Sakha Republic as well as Severo-Kurilsky District of &#x23; the Sakhalin Oblast (also known as the North Kuril Islands), represented &#x23; until now by Asia/Magadan, will instead move to UTC+11. These regions will &#x23; need their own zone.

&#x23; From Tim Parenti (2014-07-06): &#x23; Asia/Srednekolymsk covers parts of (14, RU-SA) Sakha (Yakutia) Republic: &#x23; 14-01	****	Abyysky District &#x23; 14-03	****	Allaikhovsky District &#x23; 14-08	****	Verkhnekolymsky District &#x23; 14-17	****	Momsky District &#x23; 14-20	****	Nizhnekolymsky District &#x23; 14-25	****	Srednekolymsky District &#x23; &#x23; ...and parts of (65, RU-SAK) Sakhalin Oblast: &#x23; 65-11	****	Severo-Kurilsky District (North Kuril Islands)

&#x23; From Tim Parenti (2014-07-02): &#x23; Oymyakonsky District of Sakha Republic (represented by Ust-Nera), along with &#x23; most of Sakhalin Oblast (represented by Sakhalin) will be moving to UTC+10 on &#x23; 2014-10-26 to stay aligned with VLAT/SAKT; however, Severo-Kurilsky District &#x23; of the Sakhalin Oblast (also known as the North Kuril Islands, represented by &#x23; Severo-Kurilsk) will remain on UTC+11. etc &#x23; Srednekolymsk and Zyryanka are the most populous places amongst these &#x23; districts, but have very similar populations. etc &#x23; Go with Srednekolymsk. &#x23; &#x23; Since Magadan Oblast moves to UTC+10 on 2014-10-26, we cannot keep using MAGT &#x23; as the abbreviation. Use SRET instead. Zone Asia/Srednekolymsk	10:14:52 -	LMT	1924 May 2 10:00	-	MAGT	1930 Jun 21 # Magadan Time 11:00	Russia	MAG%sT	1991 Mar 31 2:00s 10:00	Russia	MAG%sT	1992 Jan 19 2:00s 11:00	Russia	MAG%sT	2011 Mar 27 2:00s 12:00	-	MAGT	2014 Oct 26 2:00s 11:00	-	SRET	# Srednekolymsk Time Summary: The zone is called Asia/Srednekolymsk, had Magadan time (MAGT) before 2014 Oct 26 and Srednekolymsk Time (SRET) from that date. --BIL (talk) 13:09, 26 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I had understood that these names were official, i.e. that the Russian government had formally decided what the name should be and that we were following that. It appears that they are actually going for "First Zone" through "Eleventh Zone", which is not particularly descriptive.  In any case, it appears that the table is correct and that Srednekolymsk Time is not a Wikipedia neologism, which were my concerns.


 * I wonder as to the benefit of maintaining Magadan Time and Srednekolymsk Time as separate articles: if this boundary lasts it's difficult to see the enduring notability of Magadan time as distinct from Srednekolymsk time. We might easily consider Srednekolymsk Time to be the continuation of the Magadan zone pre-2010, except that the Magadan oblast itself moved into Vladivostok time.  Similarly, we treat the new Samara zone as a continuation of the pre-2010 Samara zone, the new Kamchatka zone as a continuation of the pre-2010 Kamchatka zone.  Would we not be better off renaming the old Magadan Time to Srednekolymsk Time and referring to the old name in the article? Kahastok talk 15:06, 26 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Well, all articles in ru.wp about Russian time zones (except for Moscow Time) start with e.g. "Samara Time (SAMT) is an unofficial designation for the local time in the time zone where Samara is located", so apparently no, they aren't anyhow official. YLSS (talk) 15:16, 26 October 2014 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Time in Russia. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20120107130206/http://government.ru/gov/results/16355/ to http://www.government.ru/gov/results/16355/

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Cheers.—cyberbot II  Talk to my owner :Online 00:21, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Crimea as part of Russsian time zone?
Yes. De facto in Crimea act accordingly Russian time, but spamming article with maps with Crimea as part of Russia are mainly a part of the project of Russians and their yes-men to justify and to normalize Crimea as a part of Russia. Internationally and officially this annexation isn't accepted. This same applies with time zones.--Smörre (talk) 20:35, 2 November 2017 (UTC)


 * So can't someone edit the bloody map and remove Crimea from there for the other languages article versions? 77.76.2.182 (talk) 08:05, 11 April 2022 (UTC)

Abbreviations
It seems that most of the Russian time zone abbreviations like SAMT (Samara Time) or YEKT (Yekaterinburg Time) were invented by the contributors of the tz database (these were since replaced by numerical abbreviations in recent versions except for EET/EEST -Kaliningrad- and MSK/MSD -Moscow-). Elandy2009 (talk) 18:31, 18 July 2018 (UTC)

Volgograd Oblast to change time zone at the end of the month.
Just so that everyone can be prepared to update the page when the change does happen. 108.160.125.102 (talk) 07:19, 3 October 2018 (UTC)

I updated the page.  ― Дрейгорич / Dreigorich  Talk  01:21, 28 October 2018 (UTC)