Ukraine will introduce a visa regime for Russians from July 1, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Friday, June 17, after nearly four months of Russian invasion of his country.
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The Ukrainian government must make a corresponding formal decision later today “to counter the unprecedented threats to the national security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of our state,” the head of state said on Telegram.
This important decision will put an end to visa-free travel for Russians since Ukraine’s independence from the USSR in 1991. the entry of Russian citizens into Ukraine. Security is a priority,” added the Head of the Presidential Administration Andriï Iermak.
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The number of travelers has decreased
Sharing a common border of almost 2300 kilometers, these two former Soviet-Slavic republics are also close through family ties between their citizens. The number of Russians traveling to Ukraine has plummeted since Moscow’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014, followed by a Kremlin-backed war with pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
If 10.8 million Russians visited the neighboring country in 2013, that number plummeted to 2.5 million in 2014 before falling to 1.5 million a year from 2015 to 2019, said Andriy Demchenko, spokesman for Ukraine’s border protection agency AFP. In 2020 and 2021, against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of Russian travelers did not exceed 500,000 entries per year, according to the same source.
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Ukraine, which has experienced two pro-democracy revolutions since 2004 and where Russian remains widespread, has also become a destination for exile for liberal Russians fleeing Vladimir Putin’s regime in recent years. At the end of January, almost 175,000 Russians had residence permits in Ukraine, the State Migration Service told AFP. However, many other citizens could also be there illegally, since Kyiv has never introduced a visa regime with Russia.
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