> Lithuania’s President, Gitanas Nauseda, has urged EU neighbours to grin and bear the economic consequences of stricter border controls on Russian citizens.
>
> It comes as Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Poland said they want to impose tougher visa restrictions on Russian citizens if no EU-wide ban is agreed upon.
>
> EU foreign ministers this week agreed to freeze a visa agreement with Moscow that made it easier for Russian citizens to obtain Schengen visas.
>
> “I perfectly understand there are countries that, for understandable reasons, do not want to give up an opportunity to earn money. But…it‘s a short-sighted viewpoint – to earn money from an aggressor country in which the majority of the population support aggression,” said Lithuania president Gitanas Nauseda.
>
> Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, revealed on Thursday that Russian citizens had crossed the Lithuanian border over one-hundred and thirty thousand times, and that over twelve-million Russian nationals who hold Schengen visas are still eligible to enter the bloc. He said this poses not just a security challenge, but a moral one, too.
>
>
> The five countries will now hold talks on a regional solution to bar entry to some visa-holding Russians, starting next week.
I’m gonna oppose the Lithuanian president.
It’s short-sighted to enable this visa ban.
For Estonia and Latvia this is actually a lifeline to make the Russian society in these countries more healthy. More Anti-Putin, that is. It is needed to ease the process of emigrating to the said countries for those who oppose Putin in good faith. How? Let them relocate with paying a fee towards the ukrainian forces, for example (this is forbidden in Russia and they won’t be able to go back).
Why this is good? What we have now in Estonia and Latvia (and I know this first hand by having relatives and friends in LT) is that most of the “old” Russians there are Putinists. However this is not the case with an actual Russian nationals who are willing to move out. The cases of Russians who are harassing Ukrainian nationals are exaggerated and those Russians turn out to be long-standing immigrants from an era that predates Putin (90s) or early Putin times (00s). The Austrian-Russian woman that we all know for harrasing an Ukrainian woman is actually a wife of an Austrian national, she has nothing to do with a visa ban discussions.
TLDR Creating fast-track immigration programs for Russians who prove they don’t support Putin will make Russian Baltic societies more anti-putin and thus pro-EU in general. After all, you can always send back non-citizens to Russia if they actually do support Putin. But for 1 Putinist there are 100 non-Putinists among those who are emigrating to the EU **now**. They are not loud and Reddit (and politicians) pretend they don’t exist, but they do. They’re just silent or participating in Ukrainian solidarity marches, but this is not a headline unfortunately.
Now Russia stopped gas from NS1 bet we’re going to see some positions change to supporting the ban.
Russians: We hate you and our army will destroy you!
4 comments
> Lithuania’s President, Gitanas Nauseda, has urged EU neighbours to grin and bear the economic consequences of stricter border controls on Russian citizens.
>
> It comes as Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Poland said they want to impose tougher visa restrictions on Russian citizens if no EU-wide ban is agreed upon.
>
> EU foreign ministers this week agreed to freeze a visa agreement with Moscow that made it easier for Russian citizens to obtain Schengen visas.
>
> “I perfectly understand there are countries that, for understandable reasons, do not want to give up an opportunity to earn money. But…it‘s a short-sighted viewpoint – to earn money from an aggressor country in which the majority of the population support aggression,” said Lithuania president Gitanas Nauseda.
>
> Lithuania’s foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, revealed on Thursday that Russian citizens had crossed the Lithuanian border over one-hundred and thirty thousand times, and that over twelve-million Russian nationals who hold Schengen visas are still eligible to enter the bloc. He said this poses not just a security challenge, but a moral one, too.
>
>
> The five countries will now hold talks on a regional solution to bar entry to some visa-holding Russians, starting next week.
I’m gonna oppose the Lithuanian president.
It’s short-sighted to enable this visa ban.
For Estonia and Latvia this is actually a lifeline to make the Russian society in these countries more healthy. More Anti-Putin, that is. It is needed to ease the process of emigrating to the said countries for those who oppose Putin in good faith. How? Let them relocate with paying a fee towards the ukrainian forces, for example (this is forbidden in Russia and they won’t be able to go back).
Why this is good? What we have now in Estonia and Latvia (and I know this first hand by having relatives and friends in LT) is that most of the “old” Russians there are Putinists. However this is not the case with an actual Russian nationals who are willing to move out. The cases of Russians who are harassing Ukrainian nationals are exaggerated and those Russians turn out to be long-standing immigrants from an era that predates Putin (90s) or early Putin times (00s). The Austrian-Russian woman that we all know for harrasing an Ukrainian woman is actually a wife of an Austrian national, she has nothing to do with a visa ban discussions.
TLDR Creating fast-track immigration programs for Russians who prove they don’t support Putin will make Russian Baltic societies more anti-putin and thus pro-EU in general. After all, you can always send back non-citizens to Russia if they actually do support Putin. But for 1 Putinist there are 100 non-Putinists among those who are emigrating to the EU **now**. They are not loud and Reddit (and politicians) pretend they don’t exist, but they do. They’re just silent or participating in Ukrainian solidarity marches, but this is not a headline unfortunately.
Now Russia stopped gas from NS1 bet we’re going to see some positions change to supporting the ban.
Russians: We hate you and our army will destroy you!
Europe: Welcome dear friends.