Moscow Lifts COVID-19 Measures

Despite its high number of cases, the citizens of Moscow began to resume their normal lives on Tuesday as the Russian capital is ending a strict lockdown that has been in place for more than two months.

As of today, more than 12 million Moscow residents, in Europe's most populated city, will be able to walk and use public transport without digital passes or any other restrictions.

"These are my first steps out, for pleasure, and it's a gingerly feeling," Marina, 71, who is a retired architect, told ABC News in Moscow's central Taganka district. "But that's what freedom tastes like at the time of coronavirus."

"We just have to make sure we don't grow suddenly too incautious," she explained as she walked to take a subway for the first time in ten weeks. "The possibilities of the life we've been confined to came with such limits that I don't know how to even put into words, so we have to be careful, wear masks and gloves at all times."

Traffic jams quickly returned to Moscow's congested roads as residents came out onto the streets on a warm and gloriously sunny day in the Russian capital. It was only a week ago that the streets were completely empty and the only sound you could hear was an empty public bus passing.

Taking to the streets, there were almost no tourists in sight on the streets of Moscow. The first steps out of a quarantine into the public space for pleasure seemed liberating, joyful, but above all -- necessary.

Walking through the historic Taganka neighborhood, what stood out about the sea of people were the amount of masks and, sporadically, gloves: firmly on, firmly off, below or above the nose, hanging off of one ear as an earring. Needless to say, Moscow is not really Moscow when the faces of its people are...