Abstract The COVID-19 outbreak has influenced virtually all aspects of our life, in particular, hundreds of millions of people around the world have been forced to study online. To observe the practical realization of emergency remote teaching of chemistry during the first wave of COVID-19 in Russia we gave the survey to 217 teachers and 355 students from more than 50% regions of Russia about their experience during distance learning of chemistry. 17% of students were lacking chemistry lessons at all. We compared this with the situation in Letovo international boarding school in Moscow and found relative success in terms of lessons adaptation and overall satisfaction compared to the Russia-wide survey. This might be because of the fine educational organization effort and implemented learning management system (LMS). There is a high probability of a second COVID-19 wave or any other occasion that may lead to sudden change to distance learning. Teacher community should learn from world-wide and country-wide experiences of the first COVID-19 wave to become prepared for future challenges. Those preparation measures may include implementing LMS and strategy development.