2023-08-31 04:48:39
This summer, many Russians did not want to go abroad for their holidays as they usually did, for others the trips were complicated.
Russia is now the most sanctioned country in the world. Banned from nations, Moscow has never seemed so isolated on the world map, even more so than in the days of the USSR. In this context, the Russians are ending their summer holidays, while their country is in its second year of war and they see almost nothing of it from their balcony in Moscow or Saint Petersburg.
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Thus, apparently, nothing has changed in Moscow: this summer, as usual, we took advantage of the sunny terraces and the beaches installed on the banks of the Moskva. However, some Russians, like Denis, did not want to go abroad as they usually did. “From March-April, I realized that it was better for me not to leave, he confides. I know a lot of people have been mobilized and I’m not in the mood to have fun one way or another. Society is in a state of survival…”
For Russians, the summer of 2023 marked the return of holidays “in the country”, explains Ivetta Berdyan, of the Moscow travel agency BSI. “The most popular destination for Russians this summer has of course been domestic tourism: Russian resorts, then Turkey, Egypt.”
“All destinations where there is direct air travel have been preferred.”
Ivetta Berdyan of the Moscow travel agency BSI
at franceinfo
The absence of direct flights for many countries which have suspended their links with Russia, the difficulties in obtaining visas, the fall of the rouble, Russian credit cards which no longer work abroad… So many problems which have chilled many. But that didn’t stop Sofia, a 25-year-old designer who left for Italy anyway. “My trip was quite complicated, does she think. When I flew to Rome I had two transfers and the trip took regarding 25 hours. I have never spent so much money on a vacation.”
Difficult and expensive to travel abroad
Sofia says she was well received wherever she went and never hid that she was Russian. But she knows that these trips to Europe will be increasingly rare in the future. Same feeling for Katia, a Moscow executive:“Of course, I would like to travel freely. It seems to me that if you don’t leave your home, you have the feeling that nothing else exists except your country”, she confides.
“I want to be optimistic. In the next ten years something will change and we will see other countries. But right now it looks very expensive, very difficult.”
For the Russian middle class, travel, especially in Europe, had become the symbol of the exit from the great crisis which had followed the collapse of the USSR. They had become the clear sign that their country, long closed, was entering the world. In Moscow, apparently, nothing has changed, but yet nothing is as before.
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