MOSCOW, April 21./TASS/. The Kremlin is closely observing the public’s mood on social networks, keeping it in mind when working on measures of support, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Tuesday.
However, he doesn’t see floods of different hashtags on various Internet resources as some sort of rally.
"We are monitoring very closely the emergence of different formats over the Internet," he said, adding that people’s complaints were considered during work on measures of support. "Of course, we are keeping a close eye on those messages where people detail the difficulties they are going through and the reasons behind these difficulties," he specified. "Whenever possible, this is taken into regard when drawing up further plans of support for different categories of citizens and participants in economic life," he added.
Peskov added that various new formats for expressing people’s opinion are emerging on a large scale. "I mean different formats, since a huge number of people are in self-isolation," he said. However, Peskov warned against "exaggerating and generalizing" by referring to the opinions of different people confined to their homes, expressed via the services of the Yandex search engine as "online rallies." "This is in no way a separate campaign," he stressed.
"Nevertheless, nothing escapes our attention. We are closely monitoring all this," he concluded.
Earlier, residents of different Russian cities in self-isolation used Yandex Maps and Navigator to tag city administrations, leaving comments with demands to lift restrictions.
To date, a total of 52,763 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Russia, with 3,873 patients having recovered from the virus. Russia’s latest data indicates 456 fatalities nationwide.