The chairmen of the foreign policy committees of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic, Pavel Fischer and Marek Zhenishek, supported the introduction by the European Union of a ban on the issuance of Schengen visas to Russians. They proposed to make an exception only for those who want to receive asylum. It is reported by Kommersant.
“It is a shame how much money Russians, whose property may be of criminal origin, spend on luxury goods in Berlin and Paris. I also find it shameful that some EU countries are still offering large investors from Russia to obtain citizenship or residence permits,” Fischer said.
“For the safety of citizens of EU countries, including citizens of the Czech Republic, the issuance of Schengen visas for citizens of the Russian Federation should be completely stopped,” Fisher said.
Zhenishek said that the abolition of Schengen visas for Russians was supposed to be one of the first sanctions against Russia.
Earlier, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with The Washington Post that Western countries should ban all Russians from entering their territory, as well as expel Russian citizens so that they “change their philosophy.” This was followed by a statement about the ban on only tourist visas from the Prime Minister of Estonia, and the head of the Czech Foreign Ministry, Jan Lipavsky, advocated the complete suspension of Schengen visas for Russian citizens. He said he would call for this during a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Prague at the end of August. But the European Commission (EC) clarified that the EU visa code does not provide for the termination of the issuance of short-stay visas throughout the EU.
In May, the Czech Senate (Upper House of Parliament) recognized the crimes committed by the Russian army in Ukraine as genocide of the Ukrainian people. On May 10, the Seimas of Lithuania recognized Russia as a terrorist state: a resolution in which Russia is called "a state supporting and carrying out terrorism" was adopted unanimously by 128 votes. The document states that Russian troops committed massive war crimes on the territory of Ukraine, most of the dead were in Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Borodianka and Gostomel. On April 21, the parliaments of Estonia and Latvia were the first in the world to recognize Russia's actions in Ukraine as war crimes and genocide.