Russians should not be separated from Putin: Estonian Foreign Minister Reinsalu supports ban on issuing visas to Russians

This is reported by ERR.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Estonia stated that ordinary citizens of Russia cannot be considered as a separate category and separated from the leader of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin. This is how the minister commented on Estonia's ban on the entry of Russian citizens with Schengen visas, which was announced on Thursday and will come into effect on August 18.

As you know, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently announced that he does not support such sanctions. When asked if Estonia is not worried about the possibility that countries bordering Russia will remain in the EU alone with this proposal, Reinsalu replied that he still expects the widest support.

"I do not agree with the approach, according to which we look at "ordinary" Russian citizens and separate them from Putin. The war is waged by the Russian Federation as a state. Certainly, Russian citizens are morally responsible for this by their passivity. Estonia's position is that Europe must introduce sanctions. Our message as a state, since it is within our competence to introduce such sanctions, is the following: Russian citizens are not welcome here".

He also added that it is "absolutely morally unacceptable to allow hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens to go on tourist trips, while in Ukraine children are blown to pieces by rockets literally paid for by the tax money of these same Russian citizens".

Reinsalu noted that from next week, the Estonian cabinet will start discussing options for using legal procedures to completely ban the entry of Russian citizens through the border of Estonia.

"In my view, the real danger is that we currently have hundreds of thousands of Russians moving around and traveling. It actually makes it harder for us to monitor the security situation. Not to mention that it's also, in my opinion, morally very questionable".