Germany pushes EU to tighten Russian tourist visas after sabotage attacks

A man holding both Belarusian and Russian passports walked into the Italian embassy in Minsk and obtained a tourist visa for the Schengen area. He never set foot in Italy. Instead, German authorities say, he traveled to Leipzig airport with drones and explosives, planning an attack that would have struck at the heart of European infrastructure. The incident has exposed what Berlin now calls a dangerous gap in how the European Union manages entry to its borders—and it has set off a chain reaction of recrimination and policy debate across the continent.

Germany's government is pushing its EU partners to drastically curtail tourist visas for Russian citizens, arguing that the current system has become a security liability. A spokesperson for Germany's foreign ministry stated plainly that too many visas are being issued to Russians for holidays in the European Union. Officials close to the government go further, saying the volume of visas being granted undermines the entire sanctions regime built around the Ukraine war and makes it impossible to track who is actually entering European territory and why.

The numbers tell a stark story. Italy, which issued more Schengen visas than any other EU country in 2025, has dramatically increased its issuance to both Russian and Belarusian citizens since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. In 2021, Italy granted 2,968 visas to Belarusian citizens. By 2025, that figure had jumped to 50,709—a seventeenfold increase. For Russians, the trajectory is similarly steep: Italian visas to Russian nationals rose from 63,894 in 2021 to more than 165,000 in 2025, nearly tripling despite the ongoing war. Together with France and Spain, Italy accounts for three-quarters of all visa applications from Russians across the entire bloc.

Italy's foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, has ordered an investigation into how the Belarusian suspect obtained his visa. He acknowledged that visas are granted when applicants meet stated requirements and no individual alert flags them as a security concern, but he promised to examine why this particular visa was issued. The question hanging over his response is whether the system itself—designed for peacetime tourism—can function as a security tool in an era of hybrid warfare.

Not all EU member states have taken the same approach. Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and the Czech Republic have essentially halted visa issuance to Russian citizens, implementing national restrictions that exceed what Brussels requires. These countries, many of them bordering Russia or with significant Russian minorities, have chosen near-total closure. But other member states have continued granting visas in large numbers, and some have actually increased them. The result is a patchwork of policies that creates obvious vulnerabilities.

Roderich Kiesewetter, a leading foreign and security policy voice for Germany's governing CDU party, has called on the EU to immediately suspend its tourist visa program for Russians entirely. He describes the current system as untenable from both security and moral standpoints. The security risk, he argues, is enormous. Russians with valid Schengen visas can move freely across the continent, and that freedom is being systematically exploited for espionage and sabotage operations. Kiesewetter contends that issuing tourist visas to Russians contradicts Europe's stated strategy of isolating Moscow and sends a false signal of normalcy to wealthy Russians—precisely those who benefit most from the Kremlin's system. He frames the contradiction starkly: Russia wages a brutal war of aggression against Ukraine while Russians continue to vacation without restriction in European cities.

Yet some anti-war Russian activists operating in Europe offer a complicating perspective. They argue that tightening visa controls for all Russian citizens may not significantly impede Moscow's sabotage operations, because Russian intelligence has shifted its tactics. Rather than deploying professional operatives across Europe, Russian services now recruit operatives remotely, often through Telegram channels, paying them in cryptocurrency to carry out specific tasks. This approach keeps the intelligence officers directing operations safely within Russia. In several recent cases prosecuted in Germany and Lithuania, the alleged recruits were Ukrainian or Baltic citizens, not Russians at all. The implication is clear: visa restrictions alone cannot solve a problem that has evolved beyond traditional espionage tradecraft.

Germany's government has already announced a series of measures in response to what it says was Russian intelligence involvement in the Leipzig plot. These include closing the Russian consulate in Bonn, summoning the Russian ambassador to the foreign ministry, and intensifying monitoring of Russia's shadow fleet of vessels illegally transporting oil in the Baltic. The EU has announced a 22nd sanctions package and expanded its list of Russians banned from entering the bloc. But the visa question remains unresolved—a fundamental disagreement about whether Europe's open borders can coexist with the reality of Russian hybrid warfare.