Ksenia Safina, Mikhail Moldovan and Georgii Bazykin from Skoltech have co-authored a paper “Spread of endemic SARS-CoV-2 lineages in Russia before April 2021” that has been recently released in PLoS One journal. The scientists show that among the globally significant variants of concern that have spread globally by late 2020, alpha (B.1.1.7), beta (B.1.351) or gamma (P.1), none have been sampled in Russia before the end of 2020. Instead, between summer 2020 and spring 2021, the epidemic in Russia has been characterized by the spread of two lineages that were rare in most other countries: B.1.1.317 and a sublineage of B.1.1 including B.1.1.397 (hereafter, B.1.1.397+). Their frequency has increased concordantly in different parts of Russia. Full text of the paper is available here.