How Russia Treats Tourists: Welcoming Attitude or Not
Browse more guides: Russia travel | Europe destinations How Russia Treats Tourists: Welcoming Attitude or Not Last updated: April 2026 · 12 min read Russians are genuinely welcoming to tourists. In tourist corridors. That qualifier matters more in 2026 than it did the first time I went, because the country I visited pre-2022 and the country I returned to in 2024 aren't the same trip on the ground. Same museums. Same metro. So but but same Petersburg light at 11 PM in summer. But the logistics . Cards, English coverage, app ecosystem, the visa process itself . Shifted hard after February 2022. Western Visa and Mastercard stopped working in Russia by March that year. Apple Pay and Google Pay went dark. The pool of fluent English speakers thinned, especially outside Moscow and Petersburg. State paranoia ticked up. Tourist monitoring, too. And yet. The Russian babushka selling pirozhki on Nevsky Prospekt still smiled when I butchered "spasibo." The Hermitage guide stil...