Visitors of the first Russian official casino Orakul in a special gambling zone near the town of Azov, Russia’s southern Krasnodar region. Casinos and slot-machine halls shut down across Russia as a new law took effect that put sweeping new restrictions on the country’s formerly boisterous gaming industry. Under the law, casinos are only allowed to operate in four remote regions, each at least 1,000 kilometres from Moscow and some as far away as Siberia and Russia’s Pacific Ocean coast.

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