| On December 1, 2005 all area codes which started with "0" will now start with "4". The old code will also work, but only till February 1, 2006, so that people could get accustomed to the new one. Why did they decide to change the codes? We have the answer of the Ministry of Communication of Russian Federation.
Almost all over the world people dial "0" for international calls, while in Russia we still have to dial "8-10". Since Russia has decided to approach the world calling standard, the first step was to eliminate "0" in area codes.
The next step will be changing the emergency numbers, like police, ambulance, and fire department. There will not be numbers which start with "0" now, all of them will be replaced by one number - 112. That is planned to have been done by 2008.
After this the sequence for long distance and international calls will be changed. However, until it has not been carried out, we still need to dial "8" to get the long distance line.
The list of the cities affected:
| City |
Old code |
New code |
| Belgorod |
0722 |
4722 |
| Bryansk |
0832 |
4832 |
| Vladimir |
0922 |
4922 |
| Voronezh |
0732 |
4732 |
| Ivanovo |
0932 |
4932 |
| Kaliningrad |
0112 |
4012 |
| Kaluga |
0842 |
4842 |
| Kostroma |
0942 |
4942 |
| Kursk |
0712 |
4712 |
| Lipetsk |
0742 |
4742 |
| Moscow |
095 |
495 |
| Moscow region |
096 |
496 |
| Orel |
0862 |
4862 |
| Ryazan |
0912 |
4912 |
| Smolensk |
0812 |
4812 |
| Tambov |
0752 |
4752 |
| Tver |
0822 |
4822 |
| Tula |
0872 |
4872 |
| Yaroslavl |
0852 |
4852 |
|
