The lockdown is over in Moscow and foot traffic in the capital and St Petersburg’s major malls is starting to recover, but remains at less than half its previous levels, according to the latest data from Watcom.

Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin did an abrupt about face and lifted almost all the restrictions on Muscovites in the last two days, after he reportedly talked to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend.

Residents of Moscow are now allowed out of their houses and apartments for non-essential reasons. The QR code system, where residents had to apply for permission to leave their house, has been lifted. And the regime allotting times and days to residents for walks in the park has also gone.

Sobyanin has led Russia’s charge in fighting the coronavirus (COVID-19) and previously imposed one of the strictest regimes in Europe. He recently said he wanted to extend the restrictions to June 14, although Putin went on telly at the start of this month saying the restrictions would be lifted, but left the final decision to regional governors. Moscow, along with St Petersburg, is one of the two cities in Russia that are counted as regions in their own right, giving Sobyanin the authority to make up his own mind about when and how the restrictions should be lifted.

Critics have pointed to the fact that the Kremlin is desperate to hold the mooted national referendum, on constitutional changes that circumvent a presidential two-term limit and would allow Putin to remain in office until 2034, that is also slated to happen on June 14.

Clearly this plays a role but at the same time restrictions are being lifted across Europe as all politicians are desperate to get their populations back to work.

As bne IntelliNews has extensively reported, the impact of the stop-shock on Russia’s economy has been significant. In the most recent data, the basic sectors of the economy – a good proxy for GDP – were down by 10% in May and consumer orientated sectors were down by a third or more. Moreover, unemployment jumped from 4.7% in March to 5.3% in April, which can cause potential political problems for Putin.

The Watcom shopping index, which uses 3D imaging in the leading malls to measure foot traffic in real time, jumped last Monday as the first restrictions were eased. Foot traffic was still down at 40% of that for the same day a year earlier, but throughout, the lockdown traffic has been down by between 70% and 80%.

St Petersburg showed identical trends, although the return to the shops has been more cautious in the northern capital, trailing Moscow’s results by about 5 percentage points.

Watcom also released its weekly data that bne IntelliNews has been tracking for over six years and there the collapse of foot traffic and now its gradual recovery is even clearer.

In the latest week (Week 22) the index fell to 113 points, less than a quarter of its level over the last five years of between 460 and 530. The index was doing well until the pandemic hit.

In Week 11 the index had risen to 488 points, its best result in three years, as the retail sector began to recover on the back of a return to growth in personal incomes after some six years of stagnation. 2020 was shaping up to be a good year for the retail business when disaster struck.

By Week 13 the index halved to 275 and then halved again the following week until it hit a low of 68 in Week 16 – in the midst of the lockdown. St Petersburg shows almost identical results, as the rest of Russia’s regional cities were all locked down within days of Sobyanin’s decision to turn the Russian capital off.

The corresponding daily data looks better. Recovery in foot traffic took off 10 days ago and has steadily improved since then from a 43.1% year-on-year fall to a -35.1% fall as of June 6.

St Petersburg still has lockdown rules in effect and its traffic, while it has improved marginally in the last two weeks, remains down by 65.5% as of June 6, with little change in the preceding ten days after a one-day surge on June 1.

The outlook for recovery, based on China’s experience, is for a gradual growth in the retail sector that will be slow in the first months while the coronavirus is prevalent in the city.

Russia confirmed 8,404 new coronavirus infections on June 10, bringing the country’s official number of cases to 493,657, reports the Moscow Times. Over the past 24 hours 216 people have died, bringing the overall toll to 6,358 – a rate considerably lower than in many other countries hit hard by the pandemic. A total of 10,386 people have recovered over the last 24 hours, bringing the overall number of recoveries to 252,783.

The R0 infection rate is currently around 1, which means one person is infecting one new person, but that also means the number of infections will remain stable and not shrink until the R0 falls below 1.

Analysts do not see a strong recovery in retail sales until next year and much will depend on the lingering economic effects the pandemic has had on both Russia and the global economy.