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St. Petersburg restaurant owners take down ‘Resistance Map’ after just two days

The creators of the “Resistance Map” project — a group of restaurants and bars in St. Petersburg, planning to operate over the New Year holidays despite official orders to close to prevent the spread of COVID-19 — have announced that they are shutting down their website:

From today, December 10, 2020, we are closing access to the map, because it seems to us that we managed to “get through” and the authorities finally heard us. And our colleagues in the industry were finally able to convey their proposals for the introduction of actually effective and logical measures to counter the coronavirus in St. Petersburg.

“Resistance Map” member Nikolai Korsakov, who owns the bar Podnebesnaya, told Forbes that another reason they shut down the project was because of fake entries: “Unscrupulous restaurateurs added their competitors’ locations to the map in order to incriminate them. All this had to be stopped.”

According to Korsakov, his establishment will observe the coronavirus restrictions “from now on,” including the order to close by 7:00 p.m. “We will decide whether we continue to work, in spite of the restrictions, based on what happens,” the business owner told Forbes. 

St. Petersburg Prosecutor Sergey Litvinenko and Deputy Governor Evgeny Yelin met with local restaurant owners on December 10, reports the television channel Sankt Peterburg. The business owners told the officials that they are prepared to close December 31 and January 1, but wish to remain open until 11:00 p.m. on the remaining days, rather than closing at 7:00 p.m. as the city authorities ordered for the holiday period.

In response, the officials advised them to be patient and “think about alternative options for business development”: “For example, organizing street vending.”

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