Estonia aiming to deny entry to most Russian citizens, foreign minister says

Estonia's Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu on Wednesday said that his country is aiming to stop most Russian citizens from entering Estonia within weeks, if possible, acting in concert with its regional partners.

"It takes some time, but I think timing is also critical, looking at these vast numbers of Russian citizens entering," Reinsalu told Reuters in Prague after a two-day meeting with his EU counterparts.

EU ministers decided to make it more expensive and complicated for Russians to obtain visas to travel to the bloc, but stopped short of agreeing to the EU-wide visa ban that Ukraine and several member states had called for.

The EU was too divided to agree on a blanket ban, and also left unclear what unilateral measures Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Finland, which have land borders with Russia, could take to restrict access to Russian visitors.

The Baltic states and Poland welcomed the suspension of Russia's visa facilitation deal as a "necessary first step", but stressed that more was needed to be done to "drastically" limit the numbers of visas issued and Russians travelling to the bloc since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February.

Reinsalu's country aimed to turn away Russians for security reasons, no matter whether their Schengen visas were issued by Estonia or any other country, he said, referring to the border-check-free Schengen zone within the EU.

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