OREANDA-NEWS Crimea may become an experimental platform for online wine trading, Oleg Nikolaev, a member of the General Council of Delovaya Rossiya, co-founder of the Association of Winegrowers and Winemakers of Sevastopol, told RIA Novosti.

"The Association of Winegrowers and Winemakers of Sevastopol has prepared an initiative to declare the Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol an experimental platform for online wine trading. The region has all the possibilities for this. We only need a legal framework," he said.

According to Nikolayev, there is no more controlled way of selling than via the Internet.

"Alternatively, one of the requirements is that the buyer's account must be linked to Gosuslugi. Orders can be accepted on specialized marketplaces, and deliveries go through the points of delivery of goods — partner stores with a license to sell alcohol. And if it can be delivered directly to the house, the small winemakers of Crimea and Sevastopol and the budgets of the two regions will say a huge thank you," the agency's interlocutor added.

In April 2023, the government submitted to the State Duma a bill that proposed conducting an experiment on online trading of Russian wine through the Russian Post website. The experiment was planned to be launched on November 1, 2023 in Moscow and the Moscow region. The Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Health opposed it then. As Alexey Sazanov, State Secretary and Deputy Finance Minister, told reporters yesterday, there is no consensus in the government on this idea.