Paphos People

EU foreign ministers decided on Wednesday to make it more expensive and lengthier for Russians to obtain visas to travel to the bloc, but stopped short of agreeing to the EU-wide visa ban that Ukraine and several member states had called for.

The EU was too divided to agree at this stage on a blanket ban, and also left unclear what unilateral measures Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Finland, which have land borders with Russia, could take to restrict access to Russian visitors.

These five countries welcomed the suspension of Russia’s visa facilitation deal as a step in the right direction, but four of them stressed that more needed to be done to “drastically” limit the numbers of visas issued and Russians travelling to the bloc since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

“Until such measures are in place on the EU level, we … will consider introducing on the national level temporary measures of visa ban, or restricting border crossing for Russian citizens holding EU visas, in order to address imminent public security issues,” Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland said in a joint statement.

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky said the EU’s executive Commission would indeed look at ways to go further, including what can be done with what Lipavsky said were about 12 million Schengen visas already issued for Russians – referring to the 26-country zone of open borders.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, argued that the suspension of the visa facilitation deal will by itself already have a real impact.

“This will significantly reduce the number of new visas issued by the EU member states. It’s going to be more difficult, it’s going to take longer,” he told a news conference at the end of a two-day meeting of EU foreign ministers in Prague.

Borrell said a substantial increase in border crossings from Russia into neighbouring states since mid-July had made it necessary to suspend the visa facilitation agreement.

“SECURITY RISK”

“This has become a security risk for these neighbouring states,” he added. “In addition to that, we have seen many Russians travelling for leisure and shopping as if no war was raging in Ukraine.”

More than one million Russian citizens have entered the bloc through land border crossing points since the beginning of the Ukraine invasion, most of them via Finland and Estonia, the bloc’s border agency Frontex said.

Ukraine has repeatedly said ordinary Russians must also pay for the invasion, which has killed thousands of civilians, according to the United Nations, and levelled cities.

Its foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, earlier on Wednesday repeated calls for an EU visa ban, saying it would be “an appropriate response to Russia’s genocidal war of aggression in the heart of Europe supported by an overwhelming majority of Russian citizens”.

But France and Germany disagreed.

“We caution against far-reaching restrictions on our visa policy, in order to prevent feeding the Russian narrative and triggering unintended rallying-around the flag effects and/or estranging future generations,” they said in a joint memo.

Finland says EU curb on Russian visas a step ‘in right direction’

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Dave
Moira And Dave

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

It should be an outright ban but, sadly, certain countries are more interested in the money than doing the right thing. If we place severe restrictions on Russian citizens, maybe they will start to put the message across to their leader that what he is doing is wrong.

As an aside, I see another Russian business leader (from Lukoil) has died mysteriously following a fall from a window. Very strange that this only seems to happen to Russians!

Indeed yes lets do the right thing and have Zelenskiy hung for treson, corruption and willful murder of his own people.

This invasion was a matter of waiting because they had been warned so many times.

The EU and Nato simply pushed at the Russian border far to hard with threats and encouraged mass murder by the Mr Z of thousands of people.

The leadership of Ukraine is NOT losing, but the people certainly are. The ongoing attempts by the West to heighten the conflict and keep it going is sickening.

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Straight talking, no Gimmicks.

Live your dreams.

It's difficult to tell if that is really dry humour or if you are being serious.

Stating facts since the USA backed uprising of 2014.

Go check how many biological and germ warfare labs the USA had against the Russian border. It open info

If (as with Cuba) andone tried to put any form of weapons up next to USA the same would happen.

As "The West'' we have a massive responsibility usually borne through looking the other way for the majority of attrocities in the world.

I mean would you have imagined the Canadian intelligence agencies were supplying arms and ammunition to ISIS in Syria, or fighter jets to the enemys of the west?

Where there is no strife then strife makes money, billions of it.
Where there is harmony the corporations become poor.
Proven for hundreds of years and in the repetition cycle now.
Politicians are little more than self serving ponses because we allow them to be, yes we let them lead.
We are complicit, but refuse to take responsibility.

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Straight talking, no Gimmicks.

Live your dreams.

And your solution / answer is?

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Dave
Moira And Dave

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”