My wife and i went to Russia last year 2025 for 10 days and just returned this year after a 15 day trip.

Last year (2025) we went going in with all the information on hand from this brilliant website. However we arrived in St . Petersburg on Jan 2nd, First thing i did was walk into a phone store with my passport in hand to purchase a local sim card so i could get a Russian phone number which with i could then go to a bank and apply to get a Mir debit card and also to add the number to the Yandex Go app to hire Taxi's. Un beknown to me, the day before the government changed the regulations on foreigners applying for local sim cards as the issue is well known on this forum, so no local Russian phone number for us. My mistake was i didnt activate Roaming on my phone before we left Australia. We had to rely on our Hotels organising taxi's, Hotel wifi (as most public wifi you still need a Russian phone number to access free wifi), and we purchased Troika metro cards to use the Metro in Moscow, and using cash to pay for everything.
Never the less, we had such a fantastic time we decided to go again this year as we missed out on things we wanted to see, that were booked out or waiting time in queues were far too long (last year we went during the Orthodox Xmas period).

This year (2026) a15 day trip went much smoother as i had everything at my disposal.
-Russian Mir Card
-Yandex Go taxi app
-International roaming on our phones.....and they all worked seamlessly. Amazing!!

We were able to buy tickets to Swan Lake ballet at the Bolshoi as they first went on sale and bought them here at home in Australia with a Russian virtual Mir card (on the Yoo Money app) which Irena describes how to apply for here on the website
Also bought tickets with the Mir card before we arrived for the Ruskeala steam train to the Ruskeala National mountain park.

I also wanted a physical Mir card, as i couldnt get one delivered to Australia(one of the few countries which doesn't get delivered to) i had one delivered to my hotel on a Sunday morning 15 mins after i requested it via the Yoo Money app......that is amazing!!! We exchanged US dollars for Russian roubles, deposited those roubles into ATM machine and funds went straight to my Yoo money account where all my Mir cards are linked to, every transaction , deposits , tap and pay purchases, taxi rides was notified on my phone in the Yoo money app and in my gmail.
We paid using,
-Virtual Mir Cards for online purchases
-Physical Mir Card for tap and pay purchases
-Phone (Yoo money app) wallet for tap and pay purchases
-Cash

As for the Yandex taxi app i didnt have a Russian phone number,as i only had my Australian number on roaming. Before i left i had done some research on other foums and have discoverd that you can use the app with a gmail address.
You have to go to the Yandex website and create an account with your gmail address, once that has been done, you link your gmail address to the Yandex Go app, and you can order Taxi's, and your phone number is in there if the Taxi driver has to contact you for any reason (none of the taxi drivers we used had to phone us at all) everything worked great. I had the Yoo money Mir card linked in the Yandex app for payment. As soon as the taxi ride finished , payment was automatically made , no need to tap any card terminal.

As for roaming on the phone. Once you enter Russia, the phone is blocked for the first 24 hrs, only wifi at hotel was working, after 24 hrs it connected to Beeline server that worked perfectly. The GPS onthe Yandex app worked like normal for us, as taxi drivers could see our location and where to pick us up from.

I have read that if you lose connection on your phone , it might search for other service providers and because of the lost connection you might have to wait another 24 hrs.
We took a 4 hour train ride north of St. Petersburg and another additional 1 hour on a steam train north close to the Finnish border, we had no phone connection for all of the day, when we arrived back that night in St. Pertersburg our phones were reconnected to the Beeline server with no problems.
We went fro Moscow (4 days) to St. Petersburg(7 days) and back to Moscow(4 days) and were always connected to Beeline.

We had Express VPN installed on our phones before entering Russia and worked well with social media platforms such as Facebook, You tube and Messenger.

Another fantastic trip which was made even better because of the updated information Irene has provided here.
Thank you heaps Irena 🙂