Muscovites may soon find it significantly easier to locate their loved ones lost among the city's more than 70 cemeteries as authorities move forward with plans to make each grave GPS-navigable.
Moscow funeral company Ritual told television station M24 that 10 GPS terminals had already been installed at cemeteries around the city, including its most famous burial site next to Novodevichy Convent. The program is expected to be fully implemented by the end of 2015.
Alexander Nemeryuk, head of Moscow's Department of Consumer Goods and Services, told M24 that the city plans to create a registry of World War II soldiers this year. A registry of veterans from other wars will follow next year. Ordinary citizens are unlikely to receive their own registry based on concerns of vandalism.
The Moscow region will also create a unified registry of all graves that will be available online, the Moscow region's minister for consumer goods and services Vladimir Posazhennikov told M24.
Posazhennikov added that the Moscow region would start by creating a registry of veteran's graves featuring information about their time at war before expanding to the general population.
