Overview
- City authorities have equipped 40 official ice-hole locations with anti-slip surfaces, handrails, warming points and water-quality controls, and urge residents to use only prepared sites.
- Pavel Korobeynikov of Lyubertsy Regional Hospital says people with hypertension, heart disease or asthma, as well as anyone intoxicated, should not immerse because cold shock can trigger a heart attack.
- Monk and emergency physician Feodorit advises brief dips only with immediate external warming or hot tea and stresses that alcohol is unsafe for warming after immersion.
- Priest Antoniy Kindyakov notes the dipping custom began in Jerusalem’s milder climate and says participants should act with reason, with the practice typically done as a triple immersion invoking the Holy Trinity.
- Church representatives emphasize that bathing is a folk tradition rather than an obligation and that spiritual cleansing comes through repentance, worship and communion, not through ice-water immersion.