Not Tourists

Why Europe should close its doors to russian citizens – and why the countries that have already done so were right

Last month, a russian family on a European train confronted a Ukrainian family speaking Ukrainian and became verbally, then physically, aggressive. It was one of dozens of documented incidents involving russian citizens harassing, threatening, or attacking Ukrainian refugees on European soil since 2022. It is also the least-noticed piece of a much larger problem – one that European governments are now finally being forced to confront.

The question of whether russian citizens should be able to travel freely to Europe as tourists is not a debate about diplomacy or manners. It is a security question, and the security data has become impossible to ignore. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, and Norway have already banned russian tourists. Next month, the European Commission is expected to present a common visa strategy tightening entry criteria for russian citizens across the entire Schengen area. Every one of these decisions is correct. Every one is overdue. And the argument for extending them to the United States and the rest of Europe rests on four categories of evidence.

1. Russia has been assassinating people in Europe for decades

This is not a hypothetical concern. Russia has been assassinating dissidents, defectors, and inconvenient witnesses on European soil for the better part of seventy years, and the pace has accelerated since 2000.

Ukrainian nationalist Lev Rebet was assassinated in Munich in 1957 with a cyanide spray. Stepan Bandera was assassinated in Munich in 1959 by KGB agent Bohdan Stashynsky, who defected two years later and gave Western intelligence the full details of both killings. Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, a former Chechen leader, was killed by a car bomb in Doha in 2004; the two GRU officers responsible were captured, tried, and sentenced to life in prison. Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned in London in 2006 with polonium-210. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2021 that russia was responsible, that Putin personally approved the operation, and that the killers were russian state agents. In 2018, GRU officers used the military-grade nerve agent Novichok against Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, killing British civilian Dawn Sturgess in the process. In February 2024, russian operatives assassinated russian helicopter pilot Maxim Kuzminov in Spain, six months after his defection to Ukraine. In 2024, US and German intelligence services jointly foiled a russian plot to assassinate Armin Papperger, the CEO of Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest arms manufacturer supplying Ukraine.

A BuzzFeed News investigation identified 14 mysterious deaths in the United Kingdom alone that Western intelligence services suspect were russian-directed killings. Each individual case can be argued about at the margins. The pattern cannot. Russia treats European soil as an appropriate venue for state-directed murder, and it will continue to do so for as long as the border remains open to russian citizens.

2. Russian espionage in Europe is at record levels

Yesterday, July 12, 2026, the New York Times published a major investigation into russian intelligence operations in Japan. The story is titled How Putin Turned Japan Into a Den of Spies. Its core findings: after Western capitals expelled hundreds of russian intelligence officers following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, dozens of those officers turned up in Tokyo. Japan’s weak espionage laws and advanced high-tech sector have made it a critical node in russia’s effort to acquire the microchips, transmitters, and machinery it needs to produce weapons. According to Ukrainian government estimates, 90 percent of russian missiles and drones recovered on the battlefield contain Japanese-made components.

At the heart of the operation is a russian military intelligence unit known as the 20th Directorate, run from an Aeroflot office in central Tokyo – a ten-minute walk from the headquarters of Japan’s National Police Agency. Its Tokyo station chief, Maksim Filchenkov, poses publicly as an Aeroflot employee. The operation acquires restricted Japanese technology and routes it to russia through third countries including Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam.

The Japanese pattern is the European pattern at continental scale. The MI6 chief announced in 2022 that Western countries had expelled roughly half of russia’s known European intelligence officers. The expelled operators did not retire. They were redeployed. In 2024, a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies documented 34 confirmed russian sabotage or arson incidents in Europe – up from 12 in 2023, and just 2 in 2022. A separate analysis by Globsec and the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism identified 110 russian-linked kinetic incidents in Europe since 2022. The International Institute for Strategic Studies calculates a 246 percent increase in russian sabotage operations from 2023 to 2024. NATO in 2025 described the level of hostile activity as “record high.”

Every European country in the Schengen area is affected. The 20th Directorate does not operate only in Tokyo. It operates in Berlin, in Paris, in Warsaw, in Prague, in Vilnius, in Rome, in Vienna. Every russian tourist visa issued is a potential vector for that operation. This is not paranoia. It is the working assumption of every serious European intelligence service in 2026.

3. Russian citizens are targeting Ukrainian refugees on European soil

There are now dozens of documented cases of russian tourists in Europe verbally or physically attacking Ukrainian refugees. In some cases the attacks are grotesque theater – like the russian woman who filmed herself in Salzburg taunting Ukrainian women with slogans about the invasion of Kherson, posting the videos to a Telegram channel with tens of thousands of followers. In other cases the attacks are physical: assaults on Ukrainian teenagers for speaking Ukrainian in public, threats and harassment in restaurants and hotels, and – as documented by multiple European police forces – incidents of assault, rape, and kidnapping of Ukrainian women and children by russian nationals present in Europe as tourists.

Every Ukrainian who reaches Europe as a refugee has already fled a war. They arrived believing they were now safe. That belief is being systematically undermined by the presence of citizens of the country whose bombs drove them from their homes. This is not an abstract dignity question. It is a concrete safety question, and European governments have an obligation to their Ukrainian refugee populations that they are currently failing to meet.

4. The tourist channel is now a recruitment channel

The most dangerous development is the newest one. Russian intelligence services, having lost the ability to deploy trained officers under diplomatic cover in most Western capitals, have pivoted to what security researchers call the “gig economy” model of sabotage. GRU handlers now recruit third-country nationals – often migrants, petty criminals, and people in economic hardship – through encrypted messaging platforms and russian-language job boards. They are paid in cryptocurrency and offered instructions to conduct arson, plant incendiary devices, or gather intelligence at Western infrastructure targets. Many of those recruited do not know they are working for russian intelligence until they are arrested.

The specific incidents are now numerous enough to fill a book. In May 2024, russian-directed arsonists set fire to the Marywilska 44 shopping centre in Warsaw, destroying more than 1,000 shops. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk publicly confirmed russian intelligence responsibility a year later. That same month, russian handlers directed the arson of an IKEA store in Vilnius. In July 2024, incendiary devices routed through DHL hubs in Leipzig, Germany, and Birmingham, England, caught fire in cargo warehouses. German intelligence stated that if either package had ignited mid-flight, it could have brought down an aircraft. The parcels came from Vilnius, disguised as electric massagers containing magnesium-based incendiary devices. Russian intelligence subsequently attempted the same operation targeting cargo planes bound for North America.

Every russian tourist visa is a potential facilitator of these operations. Every russian traveler who enters Europe is a potential courier, a potential handler, a potential recruit, or a potential target for recruitment. This is not a hypothetical claim. It is the working conclusion of every European intelligence service that has publicly reported on the sabotage campaign since 2023.

The asylum objection collapses on inspection

The strongest objection to visa restrictions is that they harm russians who genuinely want to flee Putin’s regime. This objection collapses on inspection.

Legitimate asylum seekers can still cross European borders without a tourist visa. The asylum process exists precisely for people fleeing their governments. It is not affected by visa restrictions on ordinary tourism. The people who truly wanted to flee russia have done so, mostly in the eighteen months after February 2022. The russians now applying for European tourist visas are not fleeing anything. They are traveling for leisure (or espionage) while their country wages a war of annihilation against their neighbor.

The secondary objection – that visa restrictions punish ordinary russians for their government’s crimes – would have more weight if ordinary russians were opposing the crimes in any observable way. They are not. Every credible independent survey, in a country where independent surveys are difficult and dangerous, still finds majority russian support for the war. Russians who claim to disagree with the war remain silent about it. But silence in the face of ongoing genocide is not innocence. It is complicity of a particular kind – the kind that produces docile populations, obedient soldiers, and tourists who feel entitled to European vacations while their country bombs Ukrainian children.

The countries that have already closed their borders

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Finland, and Norway have already banned russian tourists. Each of these countries shares a border with russia or with russian-allied Belarus. Each has direct experience of russian intelligence operations. Each has made the same judgment for the same reasons: the security risks of admitting russian citizens now outweigh the diplomatic costs of excluding them. None of these countries has regretted the decision. All of them are safer for having made it.

The rest of Europe – and the United States – should follow. Not because russian citizens are collectively guilty, though most of them are. Not because ordinary russians have no right to travel, though they have effectively forfeited it. But because the security case is overwhelming, the documented incidents are numerous and specific, and the alternative is continuing to run a strategic vulnerability that russian intelligence services are exploiting on an industrial scale.

Legitimate refugees can still come. But russian tourists are not tourists. They should be treated as what they are: citizens of an aggressor state whose government has been at war with Europe – kinetically, in Ukraine, and covertly, in the capitals that continue to admit them – for more than three years.