The European Union’s decision to stop issuing Russian tourist visas that allow for multiple visits has provoked both alarm and outrage among Russians living in exile.
The E.U. said the decision was prompted by a string of sabotage attacks in Europe, but Russian exiles say Europe is punishing ordinary Russians rather than taking real steps that would impede the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine, like stopping purchases of the country’s oil and gas.
Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, who died last year in an Arctic prison, weighed in this week with a video statement, saying that while Europe had every right to decide who gets a visa, the measure would do little to deter President Vladimir V. Putin or to stop the war.
“How will this measure help?” Ms. Navalnaya said in the video released Tuesday on X. “Putin has sent his saboteurs and will continue to send them. They will get a single-entry visa, or enter on a diplomatic passport, or on a third-country passport. No problem. Are you trying to fight the problem or just to pretend to fight it?”
The European Union called the visa limitation, which it issued this month, a security measure. In recent months, various forms of low-level aggression blamed on Russia have rattled capitals, including drone incursions; incendiary devices found in cargo terminals; Baltic cables being severed and cyberattacks.
Now, Russians seeking to enter Europe must apply for a new visa, valid for one year, for each entry, with some exceptions for activists. Previously, multiple-entry visas were good for five years.
Reviewing visa applications for each entry will allow for “a close and frequent scrutiny of the applicants to mitigate any security risks,” Markus Lammert, a spokesman for the European Commission, said in announcing the new measures.
Visas for Russians have been a contentious issue since February 2022, when the Russian army launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Apart from the general guidelines, E.U. states can set their own restrictions, and most bordering directly on Russia stopped issuing tourist visas years ago.
Some E.U. members, including Germany, gave special status to humanitarian visas. But InTransit, an organization that helps Russians in danger flee, said Germany quietly stopped issuing those last May, with about 50 people stuck in limbo.
The rules implemented since the outbreak of the war had already reduced the number of European visas issued to Russians to around 500,000 in 2023, down from four million in 2019, Mr. Lammert said.
Aside from security concerns, some European officials have argued that it was unseemly to see Russians shopping on the Champs-Élysées or slaloming through Gstaad while their country was at war.
In September, Kaja Kallas, the E.U.’s top foreign policy official and a former prime minister of Estonia, called for a complete visa ban for Russians, saying, “visiting Europe is a privilege, not a human right.”
Sergey Lagodinsky, a member of the European Parliament from Germany’s Green Party who works extensively with Russian activists, said he did not understand why screening ordinary tourists should create such a furor, especially since other countries face the same rules. “What’s the problem? Why the hysteria?” he wrote on Facebook, prompting a torrent of objections from Russians about splitting families, residency problems and other issues.
Critics pointed out that many of those arrested for acts of sabotage in Europe have turned out to be local citizens recruited by Russia, often online.
The Russian government tends to use such restrictions to suggest that Russians are better off staying home rather than experiencing what it calls Western “Russophobia,” without mentioning the war it started. Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the foreign minister, told reporters that any threat from Russia was “mythical” and economic damage from limiting Russian tourism would be “another self-inflicted wound” for Europe.
The new rules carved out exceptions, including for family members of E.U. citizens or legal residents. Multiple-entry visas can still be issued to dissidents, independent journalists, human rights defenders and representatives of civil society organizations. They were already rare, activists said, and the application took months, so the process is expected to get even harder.
More important, limiting extended visas to activists will mark recipients as “foreign agents” in the eyes of the Russian security services, activists said.
Anyone in those categories who stayed in Russia now faces a stark choice, wrote Elena Kostyuchenko, a renowned Russian journalist and the victim of an apparent poisoning while living in exile. They can, she said in a post on social media, either leave now and abandon their work, or continue, knowing that they will face even more hurdles if they need to flee.
Overall, activists said, the new rules will make it harder for those who fled to Europe to stay in touch with their families in Russia, and will also complicate life for activists still in Russia who might need to escape or who simply want to stay in touch with their funders, who are often in Europe. It is just one more form of repression, one more blow toward opposition groups, said the coordinator of InTransit.
Milana Mazaeva contributed reporting.
Neil MacFarquhar has been a Times reporter since 1995, writing about a range of topics from war to politics to the arts, both internationally and in the United States.
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