“But no planes fly there today. And even trains don’t run…”: against the backdrop of large-scale sanctions by Western countries against Russia, there is no direct communication for tourists leaving our country to Europe. The only option for them is buses, which are now massively used by Russians to get to European countries, Kommersant noted.
After the closure of the European skies for Russian aircraft, on March 28, the famous Allegro high-speed train stopped running on the St. Petersburg-Helsinki route. The removal of the railway direction was the last in the chain of interrupted railway communication between Russia and Europe. Now trains run abroad only to Belarus.
Sea “waste” routes are also blocked. If before the events in Ukraine and the pandemic, cruise ships departed from St. Petersburg to Helsinki, Stockholm and Tallinn, now this option is also not available for Russian tourists.
Now you can only get directly to Europe from Russia by bus. This was announced by the official representative of the carrier “Amron” Andrey Volkov. According to him, the number of bus trips from the northern capital to Finland and Estonia has increased by 50 percent compared to the off-season – these routes are in high demand among Russians.
Fluctuations in the exchange rate of the ruble against the backdrop of Russia's special operation in Ukraine tickets increased in price by almost 50 percent – “from 2.5 to 5 thousand rubles. depending on the stop, direction and time of departure. To travel by bus from Moscow to Riga (Latvia), Kaliningrad or Warsaw (Poland), you need to pay from 5 to 7 thousand rubles.
The increase in fares is a small problem compared to the fact that many European countries still do not issue tourist visas to Russian travelers. Therefore, only those who study at European universities, have a work visa or residence permit have free entry by land.
Russian tourists who want to get to Europe by plane are advised to use flights with transfers through countries such as Serbia , Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. Probably, if there were no running transport left at all, Russians accustomed to Europe would probably even go there on foot …
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