Will EU Countries Banning Russian Citizens Entering Lead to the Creation of a New Iron Curtain?

As the war in Ukraine continues, Western states are now taking even more measures against ordinary Russian citizens. It has been several months since major Western firms pulled out of the Russian market, leaving ordinary Russians with fewer choices in their supermarkets and fewer ways to move their money across international borders. Now, news has emerged that multiple EU states have prohibited the granting of new visas to Russian citizens for the purpose of travel and studying abroad, making it ever more difficult for those wanting to leave Russia to do so legally.

The move, on the surface, is based on national security concerns. So far, the move has been limited to smaller EU states bordering Russia, suggesting that these governments fear the influx of Russian citizens in the country leading to a potential fifth column in case of future Russian invasions. From a moral point of view, the idea that Russians are enjoying vacations abroad or advancing their academic or professional careers while Ukrainians are denied even the basic right to physical safety can certainly justify the move for what can be construed as humanitarian reasons.

Yet, the move can only help entrench the splintering of the world into competing blocks, as some countries continue to interact with Russia and Russians, while others move toward completely cutting off contact with Russia at the grassroots level. In countries that spoke bluntly in opposition to the Russian invasion, there has already been racist abuse hurled against Russian citizens living there, and preventing new Russian arrivals will only help to intensify those Russian residents. As Russian tourists and students are no longer on hand to provide a different point of view on Russia, anti-Russian sentiments will only increase.

In the meantime, Russian citizens, spurned by their Western counterparts, will find themselves and their money moving to brand-new destinations. Already, the news is emerging of Russians taking up Turkish citizenships, vacationing in Dubai, and finding new buyers for their goods across Asia. In the process, Russian citizens will build new people-to-people contact with a more diverse group of non-Western states, even as they lose their contacts in the West, due to hostility or simply not being logistically able to meet them regularly.

Without explicitly using the words, Russian citizens, hit with a ban to head into the EU, may become the harbinger of a new Iron Curtain, which, like its Cold War precedent, prevented regular people from international travel across countries on the opposite camps of a hostile ideological struggle. Despite having no say in the decision-making of their political leaders, ordinary people suffered from lost economic opportunities, chances for seeing other perspectives, and the inability to meet friends and family members who, often by pure chance, ended up on the opposing sides of the borders.

Today, that sense of lost grassroots contact will especially be felt among the different former Soviet countries. Large Russian minorities live not only in Ukraine but also in the Baltic countries, as well as Finland and eastern Europe, courtesy of Russians moving across borders during the Cold War. Now, these Russian minorities are forced to choose between their allegiance to their local communities that have become irreversibly anti-Russian maintaining ties with Russia and the distant ethnic community based there. Keeping up with both will be increasingly difficult as visas are canceled and borders shut.

The timing of Russians being denied visas cannot be worse in timing, as the world continues to place restrictions on international travel due to COVID-19. Some EU countries banning new Russian entry on national security grounds set a dangerous precedent in which already existing pandemic-related restrictions can be maintained selectively, based on national origins, with only the rationale changed. As some countries remain ambivalent about criticizing the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there is no telling when non-Russian citizens will also suffer the indignity of visa bans just because of their passports.

The past couple of decades has seen the world grow rich on the back of globalization. Yet, as supply chains and money flowed more seamlessly across borders, providing high-quality goods and services to consumers around the world at affordable prices, people have forgotten that is the people that moved with the products and money that allowed a globalized economy to become entrenched. While war will surely make global business difficult, it is worthy for political leaders to ask themselves whether they want to make a bad situation worse by banning human talent that drives the global economy.