Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a law according to which a fine of up to 200,000 rubles is imposed for the sale of smartphones, computers and Smart-TVs without pre-installed Russian software. It will take effect July 1, 2021.
Among the programs that you need to have on the sold phone are “Yandex. Browser”, the search engine “Yandex”, “Yandex. Maps”, “Yandex. Disk”, “Mail Mail.ru”, ICQ messenger, voice assistant “Marusya”, “News Mail.ru”, social networks “VKontakte” and “Odnoklassniki”, MirPay (Android only), “Public Services” and others. This list was approved by the Russian government in January of this year. According to Goldman Sachs estimates, thanks to the law on the pre-installation of Russian software, by 2023 the market share of Yandex on gadgets with the Android system will reach 61%, on iOS-55%. Here is what the head of the State Duma Committee on information policy, Alexander Khinshtein, says about this: “In a fully open market, the leading positions in our country are already occupied by domestic search engines, email and cloud services, antivirus programs, digital TV and music services. In fact, now users are able to immediately have access to the functionality of applications that they previously installed in the process of using smartphones, PCs and set-top boxes”.
Also, the State Duma in the final reading adopted a document that brings the electoral legislation in line with the new norms of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. Now the President of the Russian Federation can only be elected a citizen of the Russian Federation who is at least 35 years old, has been permanently residing in Russia for at least 25 years, and has not had or had in the past a foreign citizenship or residence permit. The exception is cases when a foreign state or part of it has been accepted into the Russian Federation. You can be President for no more than two terms. But this restriction does not apply to those who held the post of head of state before the entry into force of amendments to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, as a result of which Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin will be able to remain in power until 2036. Along with these restrictions, another one was proposed, put forward by Vladimir Zhirinovsky. He stated that ” non-completion of military service should also be the basis for refusal of registration”. “How can you be the supreme commander if you haven’t served in the army for a day?”, — said Zhirinovsky. But the LDPR edits on mandatory military service for presidential candidates were not accepted, although the Chairman of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, spoke positively about the edits, calling them «very interesting» and worthy of additional discussion.
