Update on Windows support for new Russian Time Zones

As noted in my blog post earlier this month, the Russian Federation passed a new law which changes all of the current time zones used in the Federation. (A highlight from the venerable BBC is available here.)

As noted, the changes will take effect October 26, 2014, and essentially moves many existing time zones back one hour, and create two new time zones. These new time zones will not observe daylight saving time (aka DST). (Which reminds me: we have also outlined recommendations to help achieve more seamless transitions to new DST and time zone policies on http://support.microsoft.com/gp/dst_ms_response.)

The good folks over in our Windows group in OSG have posted an announcement of the coming update for the new Russian time zone changes, as we plan to release an update for Windows on September 23, 2014 to address this change. We received guidance from the Russian government that the change will occur on October 26, 2014 at 2:00 am local time. When we see time zone offset changes (due to daylight saving time) and time zone revisions, the time change is often executed with the next click of the clock after 1:59:59h. (Well, not always: Samoa made its historic move at 23:59:59.)

The update will provide and update seven of the current time zones in use in the Russian Federation:

New Name of Time Zone	New Display Name	Current Name of Time Zone	Current Display Name
Russia Time Zone 1	(UTC+02:00) Kaliningrad (RTZ 1)	Kaliningrad Standard Time	(UTC+03:00) Kaliningrad, Minsk
Russia Time Zone 2	(UTC+03:00) Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd (RTZ 2)	Russian Standard Time	(UTC+04:00) Moscow, St. Petersburg, Volgograd
Russia Time Zone 4	(UTC+05:00) Ekaterinburg (RTZ 4)	Ekaterinburg Standard Time	(UTC+06:00) Ekaterinburg
Russia Time Zone 5	(UTC+06:00) Novosibirsk (RTZ 5)	N. Central Asia Standard Time	(UTC+07:00) Novosibirsk
Russia Time Zone 6	(UTC+07:00) Krasnoyarsk (RTZ 6)	North Asia Standard Time	(UTC+08:00) Krasnoyarsk
Russia Time Zone 7	(UTC+08:00) Irkutsk (RTZ 7)	North Asia East Standard Time	(UTC+09:00) Irkutsk
Russia Time Zone 8	(UTC+09:00) Yakutsk (RTZ 8)	Yakutsk Standard Time	(UTC+10:00) Yakutsk

Impact on users: None. Users who fall into these new time zones will have their settings automatically updated on Oct 26, 2014.

…will update will include three new time zones:

New Name of Time Zone	New Display Name	Current Name of Time Zone	Current Display Name
Russia Time Zone 3	(UTC+04:00) Izhevsk, Samara (RTZ 3)	N/A	N/A
Russia Time Zone 10	(UTC+11:00) Chokurdakh (RTZ 10)	N/A	N/A
Russia Time Zone 11	(UTC+12:00) Anadyr, Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (RTZ 11)	N/A	N/A

Impact on users: Users who fall into these new time zones will need to manually switch to the new time zones, otherwise will remain in the current selected ones which will not be correct anymore for their region after Oct 26, 2014.

… and will effectively merge two existing time zones into a new one:

New Name of Time Zone	New Display Name	Current Name of Time Zone	Current Display Name
Russia Time Zone 9	(UTC+10:00) Vladivostok, Magadan (RTZ 9)	Vladivostok Standard Time / Magadan Standard Time	(UTC+11:00) Vladivostok(UTC+12:00) Magadan

Impact on users: Windows will update “Vladivostok Standard Time” to the new time zone completely, and update time data only for “Magadan Standard Time” but leave the display/time zone name as is, so the user on the Vladivostok time zone won’t need to do anything (just as #1 above), but those on the other will need to manually switch in order to get the correct name. If they don’t, they’ll still have the correct time data after October 26, 2014, till Windows deprecates the “Magadan Standard Time” time zone in a later milestone, when they will have to switch.

The update also provides a new time zone for Belarus. Belarus is currently sharing time zone setting with Kaliningrad, so Windows will create a new “Belarus Standard Time” as part of this update.

• Time zone name: Belarus Standard Time with a display name: (UTC+03:00) Minsk

• All other value remain the same as the current “Kaliningrad Standard Time” time zone

Impact on users: Users in Belarus who fall into the “Kaliningrad Standard Time” time zone will need to manually switch to this new time zone, otherwise will be automatically updated to the new “Russia Time Zone 1” on October 26, 2014.

Note: Applicable systems for this update will be the same as those for the latest cumulative update, and all systems will need to have the latest cumulative update installed before this update can be applied. You can find the latest time zone cumulative update for Windows here.

Post also available via https://t.co/4pk6kSbyHc.