Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin announced on Thursday, 21 October, that the city will be in lockdown from 28 October in order to curtail the surging COVID-19 cases and deaths, Reuters reported.
The lockdown is a partial one, with shops shutting down except those that sell essential commodities like supermarkets and medical stores.
Schools are to be closed down as well. Food joints, restaurants, and bars can only function if they resort to take-home and delivery services.
A similar lockdown was observed in June last year.
On Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin had initiated a nationwide one week long 'holiday' for workers with the same goal in mind, further stating that regional officials could establish stricter rules bases on their assessment of the COVID-19 situation.
Russia, at the moment, is reporting more than 1,000 victims of COVID-19 per day. Only the US has a faster rate of daily deaths, The Guardian reported.
Putin has blamed the spikes on the Russian people's vaccine hesitancy, saying that he finds it "strange that well-educated people, people with advanced degrees, don’t want to get vaccinated."
"We have a safe and effective vaccine."
The Russian people have been and remain sceptical of the Sputnik V, and a recent poll showed that a large chunk of unvaccinated people were not planning on changing their minds any time soon, The Guardian added .
The decision to lock Moscow down is expected to create some backlash with recent polls showing that the majority of people and business owners are worried that a lockdown will harm their finances.
Even Valentina Matvienko, an ally of Putin, said that a lockdown was not necessary and that it would "be a huge blow to the economy, a psychological blow for citizens", as quoted in Reuters.
(With inputs from Reuters and The Guardian)
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