YEKT

YEKT, or Yekaterinburg Time, is a time zone used in the Ural region of the Russian Federation. It is UTC+5, five hours ahead of Coordinated Universal Time. The abbreviation YEKT is derived from the Russian name Екатеринбургское время (Yekaterinburgskoe vremya). The zone is named for Yekaterinburg, the region’s principal city and a major center of industry and transport.

Geographically, YEKT is observed in Yekaterinburg and the surrounding Sverdlovsk Oblast, with a broader application to parts of the Ural region that share the same offset. In international time-keeping, the zone is represented in the IANA Time Zone Database as Asia/Yekaterinburg.

History and practice: Following Russia’s time reforms in the 2010s, YEKT has been used year-round, and daylight saving time is not observed in this zone. The offset has remained UTC+5, making YEKT a fixed standard time rather than a seasonal one. This arrangement means clocks do not shift seasonally in areas that use YEKT.

In practice, YEKT aligns with regional administrative timekeeping and is the basis for time-keeping in the areas around Yekaterinburg, reflecting the broader structure of Russia’s time zones. The IANA designation Asia/Yekaterinburg is commonly used in software and scheduling systems to reference this offset.