The four Russian friends piled into a small car with barely room for one piece of luggage per person. For them, it is a great leap into the unknown with, for only viaticum, a tourist visa for Spain, a vestige of the last holidays. “It took 12 hours to check the passports but now it’s gone!”, spear Maksim, appointed to be the first driver.
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Here in the Finnish town of Vaalima, halfway between St. Petersburg and Helsinki, endless queues have formed to pass controls. The Russian-Finnish border has seen its attendance rise sharply since the announcement of the partial mobilization in Russia. “I like Russia it’s a good country but I don’t like war and that’s why I’m leaving Russia for Spain”, continues Maksim, who is not immediately mobilized.
Finland is one of the last countries where these Russians can take advantage of their summer tourist visa, valid for three months, to leave their country. Even though the country has announced that it will “significantly” limit the entry of Russian nationals on its soil. Elsewhere in Europe, the doors also tend to close. The Baltic countries and Poland no longer accept these “tourists” since last week.
But parmi those who seek to leave RussiaThere’s no only young people who can be mobilized to go to war in Ukraine: here we meet lots of women too. in their car, HASssia* and Irina*, a young woman and her mother from Saint-Petersburg are obviously not mobilizable. But they intend to take advantage of their tourist visa for Italy: “I don’t like our president’s policy. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow so we prefer to leave the country. I don’t know for how long, because the situation is getting worse day by day.”
“We go abroad to find friendly people: the Finns, the Italians, the Spaniards because our politics are really horrible”
Irina, a Russian fleeing her countryat franceinfo
Since the announcement of the mobilization, Finnish customs have observed many more exits than returns to Russia every day. Between those who did not return and those who left, the total departures via Finland would be around fifteen thousand.