An alcohol lobbyist and a member of the State Duma Mr. Victor Zvagelsky (in charge of economic policy, entrepreneurship and innovative development) will introduce amendments to the recent law “On advertising” that prohibits any alcoholic beverages from any sort of promotion on TV, in the newspapers and magazines and in the Internet.

The amendments are said to exclude sill and sparkling wines from this ban in order to let the Russian wine producers promote their products as declared by Zvagelsky. The amendments also state that wine advertising does not lead to the increase of alcoholism as does advertising of spirits. News agencies also reported that the new amendments will concern only “quality wines” which are not “dangerous to health”.  There is still no explanation of how the government is going to tell harmful wines from the quality “un-harmful” wines. At least, Zvagelsky believes that only natural wines should be subject to the new legislation.

Probably the new amendment if it comes into action will not significantly change the landscape of advertising because of low amount of wine consumption in the country, still, it’s one of the rare moments of proper actions to let the information flow from wine importers and producers to the consumer. Wine advertising could be a great chance for a developing movement of small-scale wine producers in the South of Russia too, who suffer from the new legislation much more than big producers with greater power to enter federal and local supermarket networks.

Victor Zvagelsky is a known lobbyist of different spirits-related laws (vodka, of course), he is also considered by many information sources to be playing a major part in the Russian vodka scene and business, funny enough, he was also one of those who insisted on the strict advertising ban. He is a member of the pro-Putin United Russia party.