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Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu with Volodymyr Zelenskyy
Photo: HANDOUT/AFP
Estonia's Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu contradicted the words of Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in the discussion about entry restrictions for Russians.
“I don't agree with an approach where we take the so-called ordinary Russian citizens and distinguish them from Putin.
The war is waged by the Russian Federation as a state.
And there is no doubt that the Russian citizens bear moral responsibility for this through their passivity," said the chief diplomat of the Baltic EU and NATO country on television on Thursday evening.
The government in Tallinn decided on Thursday that from August 18, Russian citizens would no longer be allowed to enter the country with a Schengen visa issued by Estonia.
Along with several other EU countries, Estonia is campaigning for a general ban on tourist visas.
Scholz had rejected this on Thursday.
"This is Putin's war, and that's why I have a hard time with this idea," said the Chancellor at a press conference in Berlin.
However, Scholz did not answer the question of whether Putin would therefore have to answer personally.
When asked how he intends to convince Germany and other EU countries of a complete ban on tourist visas, Reinsalu replied: »From a moral perspective.
With the fact that it is completely morally unacceptable that we let hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens travel on tourist trips while in Ukraine children are being blown to pieces with rockets that are literally being paid for with these Russian citizens' taxpayers' money."
mfh/dpa
