In 2024, the Russian state increased purchases of video surveillance systems to 130.1 billion rubles (US$1.4 billion). However, the share of cameras with facial recognition does not exceed 5 percent, likely due to high requirements.
State agencies have made more than 20 percent of purchases compared to the previous year, while purchases by state-owned companies rose over 130 percent, according to data from the procurement website Kontur.Zakupki obtained by Kommersant.
The largest contracts were awarded to the region of Volgograd for its “Safe Region” project, approximately 2 billion rubles ($22.4 million), and to the city of St. Petersburg for its City Monitoring Center which spent 1.1 billion rubles ($12.3 million). Russian state-owned telecommunications provider Rostelecom won both contracts.
In total, Rostelecom installed more than 414,000 video surveillance cameras in the first three quarters of 2024. Their main customers for intelligent video surveillance services were regional authorities. However, the largest customer among state-owned companies was not Rostelecome but Russian Railways which signed a 21 billion rubles ($236 million) contract for monitoring security. However, sales of surveillance cameras in the commercial sector have declined, likely due to strict laws that allow only the government to control biometric data.
The Russian government has been attempting to centralize regional and city video surveillance systems into a unified national platform for processing and storing data. In mid-January 2025, the Ministry of Digital Development announced the launch of an intelligent video processing service for surveillance cameras during 2025. The estimated cost of developing the platform is almost 2 billion ($22.4 million) rubles.
The Ministry also expects that by 2030 the number of cameras in the country will grow to 5 million and all of them will be connected to AI systems that can process video streams using facial recognition and image systems, according to Russian financial news outlet RBS.
Over the past years, Russia has been attracting attention for its use of facial recognition surveillance to track down protestors, journalists, members of the opposition and citizens evading the military draft. The attack on Crocus City Hall has put the security benefits of facial recognition at the center of debates again.
