EU Travel Restrictions for Russian Citizens: Political and Legal Issues

2022 is a period of significant deterioration in relations between Russia and the EU. Apart from introduction of additional restrictive measures provided by the European Union law, for the first time the EU has taken measures aimed at travel ban of citizens of the Russian Federation, thus extending sanctions to ordinary citizens. Such actions can be qualified as attempts to create adverse environment for the Russian Federation. Measures taken at the national and union level to restrict entry are solely due to the citizenship of the foreigner. For the EU countries, this is certainly a new phenomenon in political and legal practice that needs adequate analysis. The purpose of this article is to comprehensively analyse measures to restrict the entry of Russian citizens into the EU in order to identify their key characteristics, possible consequences, as well as their compliance with the basic principles of a modern democratic society. The author comes to the conclusion that measures on travel ban for Russian citizens, with the exception of the suspension of the Agreement between the European Community and the Russian Federation on the facilitation of the issuance of visas to the citizens of the European Union and the Russian Federation, do not comply with either the EU law or current international law. The most controversial and illegal are the national measures to ban the entry of Russian citizens into the territory of a certain EU countries bordering the Russian Federation. The author believes that these measures are inherently counterproductive, since they harm ordinary citizens and do not bring any political or economic benefit to the countries that introduce them.