“Stop giving tourist visas to Russians. Visiting Europe is a privilege, not a human right,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas tweeted on August 9. “Air communications with Russia are suspended. This means that, when the countries of the Schengen area distribute visas to Russian citizens, it is Russia’s neighbors (Latvia, Estonia and Finland, the only access points) that bear the brunt. We must put an end to Russian tourism now.”
The question of a suspension of the granting of European tourist visas to Russian nationals was raised in early August in Finland. Very recently, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also called on the West to prevent Russians from leaving their country.
EU countries are already enforcing this ban. According to the director of the consular department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Ivan Volynkine, relayed by the Russian economic daily Kommersant, “the Baltic countries, the Czech Republic and Poland have in fact completely stopped issuing visas to Russian citizens”. According to him, the possibility that the granting of these visas for the Schengen area will end completely is not excluded.
For Ivan Timofeev, the programming director of the Russian Council for Foreign Affairs (a non-governmental organization), always relayed by Kommersant, “we cannot exclude the possibility of a total shutdown [par Bruxelles] d