The EU travel sanctions are currently individually tailored rather than being based on sound and adequate criteria. These sanctions do not send a message to the over 140M Russian citizens to not personally contribute to the aggression. We need a clear, criteria-based list of individuals who will be automatically sanctioned if they fall under at least one of these criteria indicating that they have contributed to the aggression either directly or through deliberate indirect support.
Let me give you some examples of said criteria and the groups whose members directly contribute to the aggression, as well as some rough numbers of how many people belong to them. There are currently over 1.3M active Russian military personnel, and around 1M of them are not conscripts. There are more than 2M members of Putin’s pro-aggression United Russia party. There are tens of thousands of Russian propaganda workers (formal and informal media channels owned or sponsored by the Kremlin). There are hundreds of thousands of people who work for contractors of the Russian military. There are hundreds of thousands of people who have visited territories occupied by Russia without permission from the countries that were attacked (Ukraine, Georgia, or Moldova). There are tens of thousands of workers of companies who are involved in stealing Ukraine property or bypassing sanctions. There are even more than 200,000 FSB members all over! All of these people are active contributors to the aggression. They are also extremely vulnerable to pressure from the Kremlin while at home or abroad, making them the perfect tool for FSB operations. Unfortunately, all of them are still entitled to enter the EU, as some EU countries do not bother with issuing visas.
Prohibiting these people from entering the EU is the first serious security goal. We must address this issue if we want to save Europe from espionage, sabotage, propaganda and prevent illegal activities against Ukrainians, the Russian opposition, or other people. It is also the issue of justice; they must pay the price for their decisions. We must also address this issue to not burden those who were unlucky enough to be born in Russia yet are doing their best to pull the country out of its imperialistic wars.
Could you imagine SS solders, nazi party members or its active supporters traveling freely to countries that opposed the nazi regime during WWII (whether formally involved in the war with Germany or not)? Me either. Even ordinary citizens of the aggressor country were prevented from traveling freely. Today we have better means of distinguishing who is who, so we must apply sanctions to those deserving of them, to those who may cause real danger to free societies.
The easiest way would be to create an additional check when applying for a visa or when entering the EU with an old visa. Similar to what Lithuania has been doing since the end of 2022 – requiring Russian citizens to answer questions about their military service and actions that may interfere with the integrity of Ukraine borders or borders of other countries that Russia has invaded. As for countries like Hungary, which openly states it will serve as a gateway for Russians into the Schengen area, however, this may not work properly. My call is to act in a manner that is consequent to the time we live in – we need to send a loud and clear signal to those in Russia, and to protect our citizens and our guests. Sanctioning by means of prohibiting entry to at least 4M Russians instead of just 2000 is a necessary, just, and easy thing to do.