BY
How — and why — Russians are losing their freedom to
travel abroad.
Within days of the explosion of a
Russian passenger plane over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on October 31, 2015, and
with the official inquiry into the event still open, President Vladimir Putin imposed an indefinite ban on all air
travel between Egypt and Russia. Not even a month later, when the Turkish
Air Force shot down a Russian fighter jet, the Kremlin issued another
open-ended ban, this time on all charter flights to Turkey.
Russian officials presented
these sanctions as a necessary step against terrorism, and as a geopolitical
display of control and power. But when viewed in the context of other
restrictions on foreign travel for Russian citizens, and of the Kremlin’s
ramped-up promotion of domestic tourism, they tell an altogether different
story.
The main goal of these
measures appears two-fold. First, they are designed to limit the exposure of
the Russian population to the outside world at a time when the Kremlin is at
pains to maintain the facade of resilience and victory-against-adversity it has
crafted through its media. Second, they aim to redirect a significant portion
of the nearly $54 billion Russian tourism cash
flow back into the country to help prop up its struggling economy.
This is a relatively recent
development. The collapse of the Soviet Union brought an end to the notoriously
harsh Soviet travel regulations. The new 1993 constitution guaranteed Russian citizens the
right to freely leave the country, and to return just as freely. With this
opening of the floodgates, millions of Russians rushed out to meet the world.
Throughout the 1990s, hundreds of thousands left the country permanently, while countless others
flooded the global resort ecosystem. Seven decades of isolation had ended, and
Russia seemed to be integrating itself into a newly globalized world. Many
assumed — quite reasonably, it seemed at the time — that this process was irreversible.
The freedom to travel was
allowed to continue throughout Vladimir Putin’s first two presidencies and even
during the challenging economic period following the 2008 financial crisis.
Over the past five years, however, the screws have been steadily tightening, as
the Kremlin has undertaken a range of increasingly comprehensive steps to limit
the ability of its citizens to freely leave the country, in part by reducing
their overseas travel options.
The first signs of change came
in late 2010, after a network of Russian sleeper spies was exposed in the U.S. and the U.K.
on a tip-off from a former colonel in the Russian Intelligence Service who
defected to the U.S. In an effort to avoid any more high-profile
embarrassments, the Federal Security Service of Russia issued a decree barring
foreign travel for its staff, except in emergency situations.
A few months later, the
Federal Bailiffs’ Service banned another large category of Russians — debtors —
from leaving the country. The ban covers people who owe taxes or have evaded
loan and mortgage repayments, alimony, or civil fines. There are rumors that it
will soon expand to include draft dodgers and even parking ticket delinquents.
The Service has since developed a comprehensive database
of debtors, reported to cover over 1.4 million people.
Thousands of Russians on the list are routinely turned back at airports and
train stations.
The next notable shift
happened after the war in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea. In April 2014,
in response to the political and economic sanctions imposed on Russia by the
U.S. and the EU, the foreign ministry issued an unusual recommendation strongly advising
Russian citizens against traveling to the U.S. and some 112 nationswith which Washington has
extradition treaties.
Soon afterwards, foreign
travel was restricted for personnel of the
Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of Defense, the Federal Penitentiary
Service, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, and many other civil servants,
including police officers and firefighters — nearly 4 million people in total.
These bans expressly
contradict Russians’ constitutionally guaranteed freedom of travel, and are
estimated to cover 5 percent of the country’s adult population — an
unprecedented number in Russia’s modern history.
Those who could no longer
travel abroad were strongly encouraged to use their vacation time to support
the ailing tourism industry of the recently acquired Crimean peninsula. In June
2014, it was reported that the Federal Tourism
Agency, Rosturizm, was sending telegrams to state companies “suggesting” that
they purchase Crimean holiday vouchers for their employees. The vouchers were
to be purchased at the companies’ expense, and the telegrams were rumored to
have been received not only by state-run corporations, but also by some of
Russia’s largest private companies.
These measures led to a mass
abandonment of pre-booked foreign vacation packages. The resulting decline of
outbound tourism — estimated at 22 percent of the
annual average — is thought to have directly contributed to the bankruptcy of a
large number of Russian travel agencies in the summer of 2014. Despite such
drastic measures, the 2014 tourism season in Crimea was widely reported to be one of the worst
on record, with the region losing 30 to 50 percent of its regular seasonal
visitors.
These tectonic shifts in the
travel landscape were compounded by the 2015 bans on air travel to Egypt and
Turkey. These countries’ affordable all-inclusive packages historically made
them two of Russians’ favorite beach vacation destinations, an obvious choice
for lower middle class and middle class families. The decision to impose the
indefinite bans, even when justified by the threat of terrorism, was met with
surprise and concern by most Russians.
A week or so after the
restriction of flights to Egypt, Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich met
with panicked representatives of Russian travel firms. They pleaded for the
state’s support, noting that the ban could cost the industry $200
million. Dvorkovich announced that the government would not compensate
companies directly, but would give them support to help expand the domestic
tourism arena, particularly in Crimea and Sochi, the Black Sea resort town
recently rebuilt for the 2014 Winter Olympics. The statement was tantamount to
a declaration that the Russian state was willing to sacrifice a large portion
of its tourism industry to achieve a broader strategic goal — reorienting the
market towards domestic travel and significantly limiting Russians’ access to
inexpensive overseas tourism.
Concurrently, throughout 2015,
many international airlines began pulling out of the Russian market. Global
budget carriers Easyjet and Air Berlinceased their operations in
Russia. Lufthansa, SAS, SWISS, Brussels
Airlines, Czech Airlines, Finnair and a number of other airlines significantly reduced
the number of their flights to the country, with more expected to follow suit.
Their departure, motivated largely by Russia’s declining economic prospects,
has led to a dramatic fall in the frequency of overseas flights and variety of
destinations even as ticket prices have soared.
This is particularly true for
major regional hubs, such as St. Petersburg, Omsk and Perm, where direct connections to
popular foreign vacation spots such as Italy, Greece, and Spain have virtually
disappeared.
A growing number of destinations are now reachable only through costly
connections in Moscow.
The scandalous October 2015 bankruptcy of Transaero, Russia’s
leading budget airline, has contributed to the turmoil. Transaero was the main
competitor to the unofficial state carrier, Aeroflot, and the circumstances
surrounding its demise are mired in controversy. Though it had accumulated
significant debts, the company’s financial status was rumored not to have been
as dire as publicly stated, and its quick fall from grace prompted many to speculate about the role of
Aeroflot — and the Kremlin — in sealing its fate. Transaero’s assets were
swiftly divided between the other major national players, and its disappearance
cleared the path for the increasingly domestically-oriented Aeroflot to occupy over 50 percent of the
market.
In a clear indication of the
growing trend toward self-isolation, the Russian government has ramped up its campaign of promoting internal tourism, with
the state media increasingly emphasizing Russians’ patriotic duty to visit
native resorts, and highlighting the health and safety risks of overseas travel.
The message has been echoed by many of the country’s senior officials, such as
Anna Popova, the head of the consumer protection agency, who has repeatedly warned Russians against traveling abroad, lest they be
exposed to hepatitis, HIV, bird flu, Ebola or plague. Oleg Safonov, the
head of the state tourism agency, went as far as to compare Russians who decided to
holiday out of the country to parents choosing to invest in the well-being of
someone else’s children rather than their own.
The response of the Russian
public to this changing environment appears divided. The state-owned Public Opinion
Research Center reports that 67 percent of
Russians believe that the government should focus on strengthening domestic
tourism rather than on ensuring their safety abroad. Nonetheless, the Russian
blogosphere and social media are ablaze with fears regarding potential further
bans, including the imposition of exit visas, with many characterizing the current situation as a return to the USSR and a signal to leave
the country before it’s too late.
The trend towards further restrictions is expected to continue. State
channels have already been reporting that the government is considering
limiting travel to the EU in response to the Paris and Brussels terrorist attacks.
The ultimate outcome of what
may, at a glance, appear to be a coincidence of unrelated phenomena is that
Russians continue to grow more isolated by the day, at a time when contact with
the outside world is most urgently needed, and when — during a severe economic
crisis — the Kremlin is especially keen to keep them convinced of the alternate
reality the state media has crafted.
Popular Russian journalist and
political activist Oleg Kashin recently observed that freedom of travel
is the “most easily understood and very precious freedom, all the more precious
as several preceding generations of Russians were deprived of it for decades.”
It remains to be seen whether the Russian public will be willing to sacrifice
it in exchange for the perceived safety of their state.
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