Germany is urging its European partners to tighten restrictions on tourist visas for Russian citizens following a suspected sabotage plot at Leipzig airport that Berlin has linked to Russian intelligence.


German authorities are investigating a Belarusian national who also holds a Russian passport over an alleged attempt to attack Leipzig airport using drones and explosives. The man is believed to have entered the Schengen area on a tourist visa issued by the Italian embassy in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. Security sources said he did not appear to have ever travelled through Italy.


The case has prompted Germany’s Foreign Ministry to complain that too many visas are being issued to Russian citizens. “The number of visas issued for Russian nationals for holidays in the European Union is too high,” a ministry spokesperson said, according to the Guardian.


Government sources said the volume of visas being issued to Russians runs counter to the spirit of sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine and makes it difficult to determine who is entering the European Union and for what purpose.


Italy issued more Schengen visas than any other EU member state in 2025. Italy, France and Spain together accounted for three-quarters of all visa applications submitted by Russian citizens, according to Euractiv.


Italy also issued more visas to Belarusian citizens than any other EU country last year, with the number rising sharply since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. European Commission figures analysed by the Italian news website Linkiesta show that Italy issued 2,968 visas to Belarusian citizens in 2021, compared with 50,709 last year.


A similar increase has occurred in the case of Russian citizens. The number of Italian visas issued to Russians rose from 63,894 in 2021 to more than 165,000 in 2025, almost tripling despite the war.


Germany this week announced a series of measures against Moscow after saying Russian intelligence was likely to have been behind the alleged Leipzig plot. They included closing Russia’s Consulate General in Bonn, summoning the Russian ambassador to the Foreign Ministry and tightening monitoring of Russia’s shadow fleet of vessels transporting oil in the Baltic Sea.


The European Union has also announced a 22nd package of sanctions and said it was expanding the list of Russian citizens barred from entering the bloc.


Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has ordered checks into the visa issued to the Belarusian suspect in the Leipzig case.


“There is a process for granting visas, because certain requirements have to be met,” Tajani said. “If people meet those requirements and there is no alert concerning them individually, the visa is granted. If that is what happened, we will try to understand why that visa was issued.”


Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and the Czech Republic have all but stopped issuing visas to Russian citizens, adopting national restrictions that go beyond EU-wide measures. Several other member states, however, have continued issuing large numbers of visas, with some even recording increases. EU foreign ministers have recently expressed broad support for tighter restrictions on Russian tourists.


“Countries closer to Russia geographically, or with sizeable Russian minorities, are shutting their borders altogether or sharply reducing the number of visas they issue, including to students,” said Eleonora Tafuro Ambrosetti, a senior research fellow and co-head of the Russia, Caucasus and Central Asia Centre at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI).


By Tamilla Hasanova