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Friday, 19.04.2024, 19:46
Russian Foreign Ministry drafts document for visa-free travel of Latvian and Estonian non-citizens to Russia
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According to the draft document published in the website of the Russian draft legislation, a separate category of non-citizens has emerged - non-citizens in Latvia and Estonia, who had been born after February 6, 1992, and had come of age, as well as their offspring, who cannot enjoy visa-free travels to Russia.
Artificial division of people in two groups only aggravates their already complicated situation and plays into hands of local nationalists and politicians spreading anti-Russia sentiment in the Baltic states, the authors of the document said.
According to the Russian Foreign Ministry, the new visa-free regime will apply to about 6,000 non-citizens in Latvia and Estonia, who had been born after February 6, 1992, and their children.
Sergey Filatov, a columnist of the Russian magazine Mezhdunarodnaya Zhizn (International Affairs), suggested that, with this document, the Russian government intended to show to Estonia, Latvia and the EU that the Baltic states were violating human rights as people living in those countries for decades did not have citizenship which was infringement on the basic EU principle about equal rights for all citizens.
In September this year Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered Russia's Internal Affairs Ministry, Foreign Ministry and other federal institutions to consider permitting all non-residents of Latvia and Estonia to travel to Russia visa-free.
The problem was highlighted by an incident in August this year when a non-citizen of Latvia who studies in Moscow ran into problems with passport control at the Latvia-Russia border.
The woman was told she needed a visa to cross the Russian border, and explained that only non-citizens born before February 1992 were permitted to enter Russia without a visa from August 10. Russian border guards told her she had to pay EUR 30 fine, but eventually, with the help from the Latvian Embassy in Russia, she was issued a transit visa and was able to return to Latvia.
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