BRUSSELS, September 3. /TASS/. The European Commission has confirmed that the number of visas issued to Russians in 2025 increased to 618,000 from 560,000 a year earlier, European Commission Spokesman Markus Lammert said.

"We are now at about 618,000 last year," he said, responding to questions from Ukrainian journalists about the number of Schengen visas issued to Russians.

He did not provide a clear answer when asked what was behind the significant increase, since, according to the European Commission, in 2024 Russians received 560,000 short·term visas to EU countries.

Lammert merely said that this issue "is within the competence of EU countries," and the European Commission is making "maximum effort" to limit the number of visas issued to Russians.

"Issuance of visas is in member states’ competence. Each individual visa application has to be assessed on a case by case basis by the national authorities," he said.

Lammert said that the European Commission persuaded EU countries to cancel the 2022 agreement on simplifying the visa regime with Russia, and at the same time the European Commission recommended that EU countries "deprioritize" visa issuance for Russians. According to him, the European Commission is still trying to ensure that these recommendations are being implemented. For instance, the EU's 22nd sanctions package again proposes that the union's countries limit the number of visas issued to Russians and ban entry for participants in the special military operation – a proposal that EU states rejected in June during discussions of the 21st package of sanctions.

Lammert claimed that before the special military operation and the COVID·19 pandemic, "we had issued roughly about four million visas " annually but he did not specify that in 2021 – that is, before the conflict in Ukraine and with direct air links between Russia and all EU countries – this number, according to Eurostat, amounted to 520,000, or a quarter less than today.