Russians will be permanently on daylight savings time when they set their clocks ahead one hour early on Sunday under a decree from President Dmitry Medvedev. Medvedev, who has already tinkered with time by reducing the number of the vast country's time zones to nine from 11, has said switching clocks back and forth is bad for health.
Scientific studies show more suicides and heart attacks occur immediately after a shift to daylight savings time, and that switching clocks back and forth causes more pollution. Russia has been grappling for decades with issues of time in a country that stretches across 10,000 kilometres (6,200 miles) and whose northernmost reaches see less than an hour of sunlight a day during the winter months. A Kremlin handout earlier this year, citing experts, said that depending on the region, the change would increase the amount of perceived daylight by between seven and 17 percent.
Russia's abolition of winter time will, however, boost annual electricity consumption by 1 billion kw/h, or 0.01 percent of total usage, the Kremlin handout read, because mornings will be darker and people will need to use more energy. "Since 1916, countries have, to one decree or another, been 'experimenting' with time and I think the process is likely to continue," RIA news agency reported Vladimir Krutikov, deputy head of Russia's metrology agency RosStandard, as saying.
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