Well, Josep Borrell has suspended the visa treaty with russia, as The Guardian informs:
EU foreign ministers agreed on Wednesday to fully suspend a visa facilitation agreement with Russia, making it harder and more costly for Russian citizens to enter the bloc, reports Reuters.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borell told a news conference in Prague:
We agreed on … full suspension of the European Union-Russia visa facilitation agreement.
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.
The suspending of the visa facilitation agreement means that Russia citizens applying for EU visas will find it more costly and time consuming.
Today’s announcement stops short of a blanket ban of travel visas for Russians which eastern EU states and the Nordic countries were calling for.
However an agreement on an outright ban could not be reached after Germany and France warned their peers that such a move would be counter-productive.
Some eastern states have said they will press ahead with a visa ban themselves if there is no EU agreement.
More than one million Russian citizens have entered the bloc through land border crossing points since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most of them via Finland and Estonia, the bloc’s border agency Frontex said.
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I’m very happy with the brain drain, which the Putin regime has richly earned. I just don’t see the continuation of tourism and cross-border shopping trips being worth it on balance as a vehicle for getting smart people out. Ordinary Russians need to understand that there are consequences for everyone when the Kremlin acts like imperialist dickheads. Not being able to go on vacation or pick up luxury goods (e.g. fast food that doesn’t have mould growing on it) are not unbearable hardships.
It will be interesting to see what happens if Putin gets desperate enough to introduce a military draft. He’ll probably allow a short grace period to allow the sons of the privileged to go on long-term holiday outside the country, but then it will be back to the old days of exit controls (and perhaps internal visas).
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Which means this war will become even more of a meat-grinder for Russia. How long will Russian parents put up with sending their newly-minted adult male children off to die for a senseless land grab?
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He already has a military draft, it’s just that
- They lied and said that the conscripts aren’t allowed to be sent into a war, which is one of the reasons they’ll disappear you if you dare say the Ukrainian invasion is a “war”, and
- They concentrate their draft on the
slave states and satrapies “regions”, so the sort of people who might make a fuss in Moscow or St Petersburg won’t notice as much.
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How did it work in Vietnam? You convince people it’s worth it.
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I’ve been talking to Russian friends and colleagues too (and lots of the Moldovans, Latvians, even Lithuanians consider themselves Russian so it’s kind of complicated), and in particular I do talk to people working in content moderation and, just as an example of how demonisation of Russia and Russians isn’t always the greatest idea, they have reacted to how their companies have told them to respond to anti-Russian posts. It’s pretty alienating to be told that “kill the Russians” stuff is okay, dead Russians is okay etc. I do of course often have these conversations with Muslim people too so for them it’s “welcome to our world”. Advocating the mass slaughter of Muslims is unbannable on social media as it has been if fact official policy of most of the Western world (and Russia. And China.) to the extent that one can become a beloved “centrist” in the US by singing “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran”.
I’m nobody but I break bread with Russians (and Muslims) and find the demonisation of peoples pretty uncomfortable. Russia is an other for the US to blame its own internal Nazi problem on. Not in Ukraine, Russia is their real actual problem, but in US politics. Yeah, Russia put money into interfering in US, UK, and other elections, but vice versa happened too on a major scale. We believe that the money poured into Eastern Europe funded democratic movements and gave water to the seeds that were there. I don’t care what they believe but whatever they did to US, UK etc. pales in comparison to the eager fash who were already there, already rising, and the billionaire media that lapped that shit up because it got eyeballs.
I blame Russia for invading Ukraine as the imperialists the state is and wants to be. I blame the local fash for being who they are. I don’t expect Russians to grasp the minutiea of our local politics but I’m fairly sure that any tourists coming to Europe will have, say, watched some sport and noticed that Ukraine is pretty universally supported. If not, they are in for a rude awakening.
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I almost entirely agree with the thrust of your comments - but this jarred…
We did not interfere in Russian elections (which would be ‘vice versa’). What would be the point? They are already rigged in that almost no opposition is allowed to stand.
But you seem to be equating** Russia’s direct interference in our elections with western money pouring into newly-free-of-the-USSR independent countries who had rejected the Soviet Union, to encourage democratic movements. I do not find much equivalence there.
**Or were you - hard to tell from the way it was composed whether this was you or you quoting others.
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Gorbachev funeral to be held on Saturday – reports
The funeral of the Soviet Union’s last leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died on Tuesday aged 91, will take place in Moscow on Saturday, Russian news agencies reported, citing Gorbachev’s daughter and his foundation.
The ceremony will be held on 3 September in the Moscow Hall of Columns, the same place where Joseph Stalin’s body was put on display following his death in 1953, the Interfax news agency reported, citing Gorbachev’s daughter Irina.
The same day, Gorbachev will be buried at Moscow’s central Novodevichy cemetery, Russian state-owned news agency Tass cited Vladimir Polyakov, press secretary for the Gorbachev Foundation, as saying.
A source close to the Gorbachev family had earlier told Tass that he would be buried next to his wife Raisa, who died in 1999.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said earlier that the Kremlin would decide on Wednesday whether Gorbachev would be given a state funeral, and whether President Vladimir Putin would be in attendance.
I’d be surprised if Putin would be seen at Gorby’s funeral. If he weren’t embroiled in Ukraine it might happen, but at this point I suspect Putin would see it as too much negative propaganda to be there. And if he does not want to be there it will not be a state funeral - which might have been awkward if it weren’t for the fact that many/most Russians blame Gorby for what they see as the ‘fall’ of mighty Russia/USSR (even though it was well on its way down before he arrived and all he was able to do was change the speed and nature of the fall).
And being there might also be awkward given tributes like this
“Gorbachev is one of those people who changed the world, and unquestionably changed it for the better,” said the British prime minister, Boris Johnson .
(Sorry - having posted this from the Guardian’s live blog on the Russian invasion, I realise it probably really ought to be posted elsewhere, but here it is and I’m late for bed.) 
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Regarding the tourist visas… I’m of the opinion that this does not benefit the russians most affected by the war - ie: the ones living in “regions” (as catsidhe accurately put) that probably don’t have the economic means to “fake a tourism trip”, while beneffiting the ones with the means, who use it as a way to bypass the restrictions.
So mostly in favor of restricting passage.
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I understand the sentiment behind the video, but I personally think it would be effective to keep repeating that if they surrender, they would be treated humanely and no longer have to suffer. I know, it doesn’t fit with what people tell me is the Slavic mindset, but fear of what would happen when you surrender is what keeps a lot of soldiers fighting.
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Yeah, after some thought I am with you there. Also, there are concerns in Finland and the Baltics that among the “tourists” are scouts, spies and saboteurs.
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Are all windows in Russia dangerous?
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