Further-eastern European Time


Further-eastern European Time is a time zone defined as three hours ahead of UTC without daylight saving time, the zone immediately higher than the Eastern European Time. As of September 2016, it is used in Belarus, western Russia and Turkey, and is also called Minsk Time, Moscow Time, or Turkey Time.
The zone was established in October 2011 as the official time for the Kaliningrad Oblast in Russia, and then followed by Belarus. It was originally called Kaliningrad Time in Russia; however, on 26 October 2014, most of Russia moved the UTC offset back one hour meaning that Kaliningrad Time is now, and Moscow Time is UTC+03:00.
Several African and Middle Eastern countries use all year long, where it is called East Africa Time and Arabia Standard Time.

History

Until 2011, Further-eastern European Time was identical to Eastern European Time. However, on 27 March 2011, Russia moved to the so-called "year-round daylight saving time", so that clocks would remain on what had been the summer time all year round, making Kaliningrad Time permanently set to, peculiarly placing its time ahead of countries to its east during winter. Belarus followed Russia on 15 September 2011, and the same decision was made by the Ukrainian parliament on 20 September 2011. After strong criticism from the mass media, on 18 October 2011 the Ukrainian parliament cancelled its previous decision.
In 2014 Russia permanently returned to winter time all year round, making Kaliningrad Time permanently set to
Transnistria, a breakaway territory from Moldova on the eastern side of the Dniester river bordering Ukraine, followed Ukraine by at first adopting Further-eastern European Time but later cancelling this decision.
The name "Further-eastern European Time" seems to have come from work on the tz database.