Ban Russian tourists? E.U. divided on visa restrictions for regular Russians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is pushing for one. “Let them live in their own world until they change their philosophy,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post this month. “This is the only way to influence Putin.”

Calls grow to ban E.U. visas for Russians, but not all Ukrainians agree

He has support from E.U. countries that share a border with Russia — the Baltics and Finland — as well as from Poland and the Czech Republic.

A travel ban is “another way of getting our message through to the Russian people that Kremlin must stop its genocidal war against Ukrainian people,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said in an email. “People change their mind-set once their own privileges are cut and well-being affected.”

But other E.U. members, notably Germany and France, strongly oppose the idea. They say it would be unfair and unwise to punish all Russians for what German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called “Putin’s war.” Visa restrictions might shrink the dwindling number of escape routes for critics, they argue, and could seal more people into the Kremlin’s echo chamber, playing to claims about Western persecution.

“You risk making the E.U. the bad guy in the eyes of Russian citizens who may not be supportive of the regime, or supportive of the war,” said one E.U. diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations in the lead-up to the meeting in Prague.

Wednesday’s session is unlikely to resolve who should be allowed to visit and under what terms. A second E.U. diplomat familiar with the debate said it would be an informal start of a “discussion” not the final word on what, if anything, comes next.

One potential compromise is the full suspension of a 2007 visa facilitation agreement with Russia, making it more difficult and expensive for Russian citizens to get tourist visas, according to diplomats.

Although Zelensky suggested in his Post interview that travel restrictions should apply to all Russians, including expats, there appears to be little support for such a move.

Much of the current discussion is centered on short-stay visas that allow travel for up to 90 days throughout the 26-country Schengen zone. More than 4 million of those visas were issued in Russia in 2019, before the pandemic, according to E.U. figures.

Members states are debating how to keep their doors open to human rights campaigners and dissidents, as well as whether and how to create exemptions for groups like family members, students and scientists.

Since Russia’s invasion, the Czech Republic,…