OREANDA-NEWS. The final round to select symbols for Bank of Russia new 200- and 2,000-ruble banknotes will start in less than two weeks. Thousands of forms with votes for this or that city keep coming to the Bank of Russia from various locations. The contest organisers have already started form processing and calculation of votes.

On 1 October 2016, all Bank of Russia branches will host the Doors Open Day and the people could fill in the forms and make their selection.

As of now, Sochi and Kazan challenge the first two positions in the Top 10 list taking the lead alternately over the last few days. Their success resulted from the active support of their locals who held numerous flash mobs to boost the popularity.

As of 10:00 a.m. Moscow time on 27 September 2016, Sochi is the leader with 249,133 votes. The first runner-up is Kazan (243,839 votes). Sevastopol is the second runner-up with 240,662 votes. Vladivostok with its symbols holds the fourth position (234,681 votes), and Volgograd takes the fifth place with 210,359 votes. Irkutsk, a recent leader, suffered a serious setback to the sixth position, followed by Sergiyev Posad, Vladimir, Nizhny Novgorod and Petrozavodsk.

Over 2 million people joined the symbol selection final round on Твоя-Россия.рф website. Overall, more that 3.1 million people expressed their preferences from the day the campaign was launched.

The all-Russian selection of symbols for new 200- and 2,000-ruble banknotes was initiated by the Bank of Russia. Never before the Russians could suggest and select symbols for new banknotes by themselves. The competition will be a three-round procedure with 7 October 2016 being its final day when the winners will be announced.