The Kremlin has lashed out at European critics including leaders of EU states and besieged Ukraine over their calls for all Russians to be banned from the West until their country ends its invasion of Ukraine along with the underlying mindset.
The sharp response follows encouragement by the Finnish and Estonian prime ministers for a ban on visas to Russians and news that the French military has banned Russian nationals from a medieval fortress and touristic site outside Paris that houses military archives.
Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has killed tens of thousands of troops and civilians since it was launched in late February, sparked unprecedented financial and other sanctions, flight and airspace bans, and contributed to a global food crisis.
Some EU countries, including Latvia, have already stopped issuing visas to Russians, citing the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, whose defiant leadership has included nightly video messages imploring international assistance, this week urged the West to ban all Russians to discourage Moscow from trying to annex more territory.
Zelenskiy told The Washington Post that “whichever kind of Russian” should be made to “go to Russia.”
But Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said on August 9 that “the irrationality of thinking” behind calls for such bans “is off the charts.”
Amid increasing tensions with the West, poisonings abroad allegedly ordered by senior Russian officials, and the creep of Russian troops and proxy fighters from Georgia to Ukraine to Syria and central Africa, Putin and other Russian officials have complained of growing “Russophobia.”
Peskov said the fresh calls to ban Russians “can only be viewed extremely negatively” and warned that “any attempt to isolate Russians or Russia is a process that has no prospects.”
EU members and Russia neighbors Finland and Estonia have hinted they’re willing to try a visa ban.
Finland Prime Minister Sanna Marin told Finnish broadcaster YLE on August 8 that “it is not right that while Russia is waging an aggressive, brutal war of aggression in Europe, Russians can live a normal life, travel in Europe, be tourists.”
Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas followed with a call for countries to “stop issuing tourist visas to Russians.”
“Visiting #Europe is a privilege, not a human right,” Kallas tweeted. “Air travel from RU is shut down. It means while Schengen countries issue visas, neighbors to Russia carry the burden (FI, EE, LV – sole access points). Time to end tourism from Russia now.”
Barring all Russians would also impact the tens of thousands of people who have left that country out of protest or disagreement with the actions of Putin and his administration.
“They’ll understand then,” the Ukrainian president told The Washington Post. “They’ll say, ‘This [war] has nothing to do with us. The whole population can’t be held responsible, can it?’ It can. The population picked this government and they’re not fighting it, not arguing with it, not shouting at it.”
“Don’t you want this isolation?” Zelensky added, speaking as if he were addressing Russians directly. “You’re telling the whole world that it must live by your rules. Then go and live there. This is the only way to influence Putin.”
The French military has imposed a ban on Russians visiting the storied Chateau de Vincennes, once the residence of French kings and a venue for tours and concerts as well as part of the French armed forces’ historical archives.
AFP quoted two Russian women denied entry by French guards after showing their documents and being told they couldn’t get in “because you’re Russian.”
Putin has spent the decades since taking office in 1999 consolidating and otherwise tightening the country’s grip on media, including strictures in the past decade like laws on “foreign agents” and “undesirable” designations to punish activists, journalists, and any other perceived enemies.
Since the full-scale war in Ukraine was launched, criminal procedures and other punishments have been imposed for criticism of the Russian military or even just describing the conflict as a war, rather than the Kremlin’s preferred term, a “special military operation.”
Copyright (c) 2015. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036