Russian Ministry Proposes Creation of National Video Surveillance System

The Russian Ministry of Digital Development (MinTsifry) has proposed including an initiative in the national “Data Economy” project to create a national platform for storing and processing information from all urban video surveillance systems across Russia. According to a report by Kommersant, this proposal was presented by Minister Maksut Shadayev during a recent strategic session on the national project.

Current State of Video Surveillance in Russia

Currently, there are about 1.2 million surveillance cameras operating in Russian cities. Only half of the cameras installed with government funding are connected to centralized regional systems, and regional authorities do not have access to privately owned cameras. The Ministry believes it is necessary to establish a national platform for processing and storing data from surveillance cameras, which would be able to connect to regional systems.

Key Features of the Proposed Platform

• Mandatory connection of entryway cameras, with installation costs potentially included in the capital repair budgets of apartment buildings.
• Video streams will be analyzed using facial and object recognition technologies.
• The estimated cost of developing the platform is 12 billion rubles.

The Ministry expects that by 2030, the number of surveillance cameras in Russia will increase to 5 million, all connected to AI systems capable of processing video streams. Officials believe this could increase crime detection rates by 30%.

Implementation and Concerns

The Ministry clarified that certain categories of property owners would be required to install and connect cameras at their own expense. A similar initiative was developed by the Ministry of Emergency Situations (EMERCOM) between 2020 and 2022 as part of the “Safe City” project, but it is currently on hold.

However, some experts question the practicality of centralizing surveillance data. A source familiar with surveillance systems in Moscow and other regions argued that transferring regional incident data to a national platform is unnecessary, costly, and unlikely to be used by local services. For example, Moscow operates 276,600 cameras managed by the city’s Department of Information Technology, with law enforcement accessing databases through their own gateways.

An executive at a major IT company added that streaming video from regional surveillance systems to a centralized national database would require five to six times more investment than the Ministry’s estimate, due to the need for extensive computing resources. He suggested that a decentralized approach to intelligent surveillance systems would be more cost-effective.