The Central Bank suspended the issuance of a new banknote after criticism of the Russian Orthodox Church

The Bank of Russia has decided to suspend the issue of the updated one-thousand-ruble banknote in order to finalize the design of the note. This is stated in the press release of the Central Bank.

It is not specified what the decision is about. But the design of the thousand-ruble banknote immediately after its presentation on October 16 became the subject of a heated discussion regarding the presence and absence of various symbols.

The banknote is dedicated to Nizhny Novgorod and the Volga Federal District. On the obverse side of the banknote is the Nikolskaya Tower of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin, on the reverse – the Museum of the History of the State of the Tatar People and the Republic of Tatarstan in Kazan, the Suyumbike Tower on the territory of the Kazan Kremlin, the Museum of Archeology and Ethnography in Ufa.

The Russian Orthodox Church drew attention to the fact that there is a crescent moon on the image of the tower on the banknote, but there is no cross on the building of the former church, which is now a museum. A source in the Moscow Patriarchate told RIA Novosti that the Russian Orthodox Church categorically disagrees with this and believes that the image on the banknote does not reflect the “interreligious character of Kazan.” The head of the synodal department of the Moscow Patriarchate for relations between the church and society and mass media, Vladimir Legoida, said that the choice of images for banknotes “should be approached more carefully.”