EU Commission tightens rules for issuing multiple-entry Schengen visas to Russians, citing security risks

The European Commission has published a document tightening the rules for issuing multiple-entry Schengen tourist visas to Russian nationals. The notable new guidance, posted on the Commission’s website on Nov. 7, applies only to applicants submitting Schengen visa requests from within Russia:

“From now on, Russian nationals will no longer be able to receive multiple-entry visas. This means Russian nationals will have to apply for a new visa each time they plan to travel to the EU, allowing for close and frequent scrutiny of applicants.”

The Commission said the move is linked to security risks faced by EU member states stemming from Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, “including the weaponisation of migration, acts of sabotage, and the potential misuse of visa[s].”

However, the decision does not amount to an outright ban. The same statement notes that, under the updated rules, applicants will simply need to provide more detailed justifications for why a multiple-entry visa is necessary:

“...in justified cases a multiple-entry visa [may be issued] to applicants who prove the need or justify their intention to travel frequently or regularly, provided that they prove their integrity and reliability.”

The Commission said relatives of EU citizens or residents also remain eligible to receive visas. They may obtain a one-year visa if they held at least three Schengen visas in the previous two years. In addition, transport workers, such as “seafarers, truck and bus drivers, [and] members of train crews” may qualify for multiple-entry visas. Exceptions are also allowed for “dissidents, independent journalists, human rights defenders, representatives of civil society organisations or other vulnerable categories, and their close family members.”

The document specifies that these measures apply to applicants seeking short-term visas who submit applications at consulates inside Russia. In other words, Russian citizens with residence permits in other countries may still apply abroad, lawyer and Ark Project (“Kovcheg”) founder Anastasia Burakova told The Insider:

“As far as territorial jurisdiction is concerned, this [applies] to Russians who apply for a visa in Russia. There is a strict consular requirement: if a person does not have a residence permit, for example, in Georgia, Armenia, or Kazakhstan, they cannot apply [for a Schengen visa] there. Well, now they have clarified this once again — this is a strict territorial requirement for Russians who apply from other countries. This [restriction] will not apply to them.”

Burakova called the Commission’s decision precedent-setting. It invokes Article 24 of the EU Visa Code, which allows member states to adapt visa-issuance rules for citizens of specific countries when elevated security risks exist. “This article was adopted in 2019, and I am not aware of any cases of its prior use,” she said.

The Commission listed risks it believes justify the restrictions — including fears of sabotage, cyberattacks, industrial espionage, the use of visas for propaganda or subversive activity, and the possible weaponization of migration.

However, in Burakova’s view, none of these risks can realistically be mitigated by restricting multiple-entry visas for Russians:

“In fact, none of these risks, in my opinion, can be mitigated by such a ban, because the flow of refugees destabilizing the situation at the EU's borders is not Russians, but refugees from Arab countries and so on. Sabotage and subversion involve a million investigations into hired people, including citizens of EU countries, who carry out such tasks for money. They do not receive multiple-entry visas and do not enter the European Union.

Cyberattacks, industrial espionage — these are [usually carried out by] GRU employees who have a cover story and, as a rule, passports from other countries, such as Latin America. We have seen such spies exposed, and they also do not go to embassies and do not receive multiple-entry Schengen visas. Well, and the use of visas for propaganda and subversive activities is a very general formulation... If it's propaganda, then it's not necessary to come to the EU and write from a computer there — bots and [troll] factories located in other countries can easily handle this task.”

The Insider’s reporting has shown that Kremlin-backed acts of subversion and sabotage are often performed by EU nationals recruited by the GRU, operatives with false identification papers, or by “illegal” agents embedded and naturalized ahead of time, spending decades to build false identities.

A case in point is the activities of GRU Unit 29155, which was responsible for destroying two Czech government-run weapons and ammunition depots in 2014 in Vrbětice, a small town in the south Moravian region of the Czech Republic. These attacks, which killed two people and resulted in Prague’s expulsion of 18 Russian intelligence officers operating in the country under diplomatic cover, were conducted with explosive devices placed by Unit 29155’s most recognizable operatives: Alexander Mishkin and Anatoly Chepiga. The pair used a fake Tajikistan passport issued to “Ruslan Tabarov” and a Moldovan passport issued to “Nicolai Popa” to access the facilities, posing as would-be arms purchasers.

As revealed in a later investigation, the pair had help from Elena and Nikolai Šapošnikov, a family of deep-cover spies working as arms dealers, who spent decades living under false pretenses as naturalized citizens of the Czech Republic.

Similarly, Russian spies Artem Dultsev and Anna Dultseva, who returned to Russia last August as part of the largest prisoner exchange between Moscow and the West since the end of the Cold War, were apprehended in Slovenia in 2022. They were living under the guise of an Argentinian married couple using the names “Ludwig Gisch” and “Mayer Muños.”

The Commission also stressed that visa issuance and the assessment of individual visa applications fall under the competence of EU member states, not the Commission itself. The Commission may issue guidelines on visa procedures “which must be respected by all Schengen consulates, always taking into account migration risks and specific security concerns of individual member states,” Deutsche Welle quoted Commission spokesperson Markus Lammert as saying.

Statistics from the European Commission (EC) analyzed by the Russian corporate media outlet Tinkoff Journal indicate that in 2024, Italy issued the highest number of approved Schengen visas in Russia, granting a total of 152,254 visas, including 108,220 marked as multiple-entry. France approved 123,890 applications, of which 40,344 were multiple-entry visas. Greece issued 59,703 visas, including 23,255 multiple-entry visas.

A total of 606,594 Schengen visa applications were filed in Russia in 2024, with 44,885 refusals. The refusal rate fell from 10.6% in 2023 to 7.5% the following year.

Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovakia, Finland, the Czech Republic, and Estonia stopped issuing tourist visas to Russian citizens, though applications may still be submitted for justified reasons. Denmark and Iceland have halted visa issuance in Russia entirely.

Six Schengen member states — Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Finland, and the Czech Republic — have issued full bans on almost all tourist visas for Russian citizens, saying they will refuse entry to Russian Schengen visa holders. As detailed by CNN, entry to the above countries is still possible, as there are no internal border checks once an individual successfully enters the Schengen area. However, temporary checks at national borders can be introduced in “exceptional situations” as a “measure of last resort.” The EC website currently indicates that such checks will remain active in Norway, Poland, Germany, France, Denmark, and Sweden until early 2026.

In June of this year, ministers from seven northern European countries — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Norway, Sweden and Poland — signed a statement indicating their intention to introduce a Schengen zone visa ban for members of the Russian armed forces, a measure they intend to uphold even after the end of the war.

“There are hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens who have fought against an independent European country, and we should take a very clear stance that these people cannot travel freely in Schengen — we will not grant them residence permits, we will not grant them visas, because this whole group, which has killed and destroyed there, poses a very serious security threat to all of us,” Estonian Interior Minister Igor Taro told the outlet ERR after the meeting.

The Schengen Agreement, initially signed on June 14, 1985, abolished internal border controls between participating European countries, creating a single zone of free movement for people traveling within it. As of 2025, the Schengen Area has 29 members: 25 EU countries plus Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland.