Press Release, 1.09.2025

Photo from open sources

Surveillance cameras that recognise people’s ethnicity have been launched in St. Petersburg. This was announced by Igor Nikonov, deputy head of the city administration’s committee on information technology and communications, during the “zero readings” of the 2026-2028 city budget. Yabloko deputies in the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly Olga Shtannikova and Alexander Shishlov criticised the installation of “ethnic-oriented” surveillance cameras.

The St. Petersburg authorities claim that the police can use the surveillance cameras to track migrant clusters and identify apartments, where hosts register a large number of migrants. Currently, about 50,000 cameras are equipped with this ethnicity detection function.

Yabloko believes that installing “ethnic-oriented” surveillance cameras is not only a questionable waste of budget money, but also contradicts the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

Olga Shtannikova:

Installing “ethnic-oriented” cameras is an admission of the incompetence of both law enforcement agencies and the “vertical” of power, into which local self-government is now integrated.

Six months ago, when the installation of “ethnic-oriented” surveillance cameras was only being planned, St. Petersburg Yabloko declared that such an approach contradicted Article 19 of the Constitution, which states that equality of human rights and freedoms in Russia is guaranteed regardless of race or nationality. I fully agree with this position. By the way, the head of the Human Rights Council under the President, Valery Fadeyev, called the idea of ​​using cameras recognizing nationality degrading to human dignity.

The Committee on Informatisation has taken the wrong path.

According to international standards, enshrined in UN documents, nationality is determined not by a set of anatomical characteristics, but by cultural identity, which is formed and preserved by each citizen. Culture is what truly unites people, and not their appearance.

In addition, I am sure that in this case we have another example of unreasonable spending of almost forty million rubles of the St. Petersburg budget for the sake of achieving a dubious goal.

It is claimed that surveillance cameras, determining the ethnicity of citizens, will allow for the effective identification of so-called ethnic enclaves and “rubber apartments” [apartments where hosts register a large number of migrants].

If we mean residential premises in which dozens of tenants (usually labour migrants) move in, then I believe that the addresses of these apartments should be known even without cameras.

Firstly, from the information from neighbours: few people like unknown people who, on unclear grounds, live next to the place where your family and children live.

Secondly, maintaining public order in the administrative area, working with the population to prevent violations of the law is the direct responsibility of district police officers.

Just as the head of the municipality in the past, I know very well that if the municipality works, if the municipal deputies communicate with the citizens, then they should be aware of all the troubling points in the territory. We worked exactly like that in our time, and the residents trusted us with their worries and problems.

Alexander Shishlov:

At the “zero readings” of the St. Petersburg city budget, the issue of video surveillance cameras with the function of recognising the ethnicity of passers-by arose again.

We did not hear any clear explanations from the representatives of the executive branch about why budget funds were spent on creating such a facial recognition system and how it is used.

I believe that the introduction of a system for recognising the “ethnicity” of people contradicts Article 19 of the Constitution of Russia, according to which the state guarantees equal human rights regardless of race, nationality, and origin.

When discussing the city budget for 2026, Yabloko will insist on excluding the corresponding expenses from it.