Vereinfachte Visaregelung für einen Besuch in Kaliningrad wird abgebrochen

The issue of short-term tourist visas for visiting the Kaliningrad region will be stopped starting from January 1, 2015, – reports the agency “Interfax”.

“From January 1, 2015 stops issuing of tourist visas for a period of 72 hours to visit the Kaliningrad region,” – is noticed in the announcement posted on the website of the Representation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia in the Kaliningrad region.

The statement deals with visas which foreign citizens could draw directly on the Russian border. Since 2002 such visas have been available for citizens of the Schengen space as well as for citizens of Japan and England.

The reasons why the 72-hour visas are decided to cancel remain unknown.

At the same time, the Governor of the Kaliningrad region Nikolai Tsukanov has already appealed to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov to state that the cancellation of the preferential order of visas’ issuing will have a negative impact on the image of the region being a bridge between Russia and Europe.

However, the experts point out that the abolition of short-term visas will hardly seriously affect the tourist flow as the number of foreigners coming to Kaliningrad for only 72 hours has always been not high.