Hungary has lately received the support of the Russian Federation’s tourism agency as a viable choice for Russian citizens seeking a Schengen visa. They would be allowed to travel around Europe with this visa, especially when certain nations are not giving travel documents as a result of the military crisis in Ukraine that started in 2022.

Even when more applications are taken into account, Spain and Finland have the lowest percentage of Russian citizen visa applications that are denied, according to Schengen Statistics, not Hungary.

For instance, Spain received a higher approval percentage of 92.5% than Hungary, which granted 90.9% of the 27,595 applications from Russian nationals. In particular, 154,450 out of 166,893 Russian passport holders who applied for Schengen visas had their requests approved by Spanish consulates in 2022.

Similarly, Finland granted 105,323 approvals out of a total of 112,737 applications, or 93.4% of Russian applicants. Due to the greater number of Russian applications, the rejection rates at the consulates of Spain and Finland are higher than those of other nations – 8,333 and 4,722 denials, respectively.

Poland tops the list when nations are ranked according to their high acceptance rates, with a recognition rate of 98.4% with only 25 visa requests being turned down. Polish consulates receive less applications than those of other nations, with just 2,208 being submitted as opposed to 112,000 and 166,000 for the consulates of Finland and Spain, respectively.

With a recognition rate of 96.1%, Lithuania leads the pack of nations with high visa acceptance rates, followed by the Netherlands (94%), Latvia (93.3%), and other nations. Hungary holds the third-highest place among nations that received a bigger number of applicants, such as Spain and Finland, in terms of the recognition rate for Russian visa applicants, and it is ranked as the eighth most liberal nation for awarding visas.

Russian passport holders now have significantly fewer alternatives for traveling to Europe than they did before sanctions were imposed on Russia in support of Ukraine and to stop armed action.

The Finnish Foreign Ministry recently stated that it will no longer accept applications for visas and residency permits from Russian nationals in Saint Petersburg. The implementation of this legislation began on August 1, 2023.

In contrast, Spain has been a popular destination for Russian citizens, as shown by the more than 500,000 Schengen visa applications that Russian citizens submitted to Spanish officials throughout 2019. This figure represents a sizeable fraction of the 4.1 million Russian visa applications submitted overall in that same year.