Timezones in Russia (2024)

Timezones by region

The most important time zone is Moscow Standard Time (MSK) with UTC+3. From the west of Russia to the Urals, this time zone applies almost exclusively, in which well over half of all Russians live. Further west, there is only the Russian exclave Kaliningrad between Poland and Lithuania, which is oriented to the Eastern European time zone. In the southwest of Russia, in the Volga Federal District, some oblasts keep the Samara time with UTC+4. Another 8 time zones are spread from Yekaterinburg through Omsk and Irkutsk to the eastern end of the vast territory of the country.

Adjustments of time zones and daylight saving time

Russia is one of the few countries that actually conducts experiments on time zone adjustments and time changes. In most other countries, changes, especially to daylight saving time, are often talked about but are not implemented, or are implemented only hesitantly. For example, between the years 2010 and 2014, there were only nine time zones. The regions around Samar (UTC+4) and Kamchatka (UTC+12) were incorporated into the surrounding time zones. However, after persistent protests from the population, they returned to the previous model after only a few years.

Abolition of daylight saving time in 2010

At the same time, an attempt was made to abolish the semi-annual time changeover by not switching back to winter time throughout the country on October 31, 2010, thus remaining in daylight saving time. The EU is also currently engaged in such a discussion. However, the changeover in Russia did not bring the desired results, so that in 2014 the clocks were set back by one hour nationwide and since then people have been living in standard time, i.e. the previous winter time, all year round. There has been no time changeover since then.

Railroad time until 2018

Different time zones within the same country create fundamental challenges. Especially in regular railroad traffic, confusion occurs time and again. For many years, Russia circumvented this by always using Moscow time for all railroad traffic. However, the permanent conversion of the Moscow railroad time into the respective real time zone caused complications again, so that this regulation was abandoned in 2018. Since then, the regional time zone has also applied to rail transport.

Time differences to Moscow