Can Russian tourists relax in the EU while Russian soldiers reduce a European country to rubble?
Countries like Poland, Latvia, Finland and Denmark no longer want to accept this and insist on stopping visas for Russian travelers. A decision should be made at EU level at the end of August.
But Germany is opposed to stricter action. A spokesman for the federal government told BILD that Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) was “not in favor of imposing such a general ban”, but that he “understood the debate”.
The courageous head of government of Estonia, Kaja Kallas (45), now rushed ahead and imposed the visa freeze for Russians for her country without waiting for the EU decision.
► Kallas to BILD: “It should be unacceptable for any of us in Europe that Russian citizens can travel as tourists within the EU while people in Ukraine are being tortured, murdered and terrorized.” Her tough announcement: “Tourism is a privilege, not a right.”
► More and more German politicians are also demanding that we should take little Estonia as an example. It was “intolerable that Russians go on vacation in Europe and spend their money as if nothing had happened,” said North Rhine-Westphalian European politician Dennis Radtke (43) to BILD. Contrary to what Chancellor Olaf Scholz (64, SPD) claims, Russia’s campaign against Ukraine is “not just Putin’s war”.
Germany and Europe are currently threatening “to fall asleep with sanctions and arms deliveries”. Radtke continues: “Anyone who wants to stop Putin must not give up now, but must follow up with a tourist visa ban for Russian citizens.”
► The CDU interior expert Andrea Lindholz (51) is also convinced: “The federal government should not oppose our European partners again: holiday visas for Russians must be stopped. It is about sending clear signals to the Russian population as well.”
► Jürgen Hardt (59, CDU), foreign policy spokesman for the Union faction in the Bundestag, told BILD that anyone who personally benefits from Putin’s regime “should no longer be allowed to enter the EU.”
There are “many more Putin profiteers in the army, national guard, the FSB, the presidential bureaucracy and the Wagner group than are currently on the EU sanctions list. These people should no longer be allowed to spend relaxing vacation days in the EU.” But, according to Hardt: “A general EU entry ban for Russians who are not responsible for what happened in the war against Ukraine would not be justified. The enemy is Putin and his system, not the Russian people.”