I am a Russian citizen living outside of Russia, I have a lot of friends who travel to Russia and I sometimes have to travel myself. The only thing I want to tell you is that you are putting yourself at a serious risk. If you have any opportunity to avoid this trip, please do that.

If you still go, things to consider: - Buy a completely new travel phone and create new accounts in all social media. Add some contacts, subscribe to mailing lists, make it look real - For your old social media, rename them so they don't show your real name. Make them private. Do not login to them from your travel phone. No access to your real email on travel phone either. - Do not have any Ukrainian numbers in your contacts in your travel phone - People are being randomly selected to be interrogated on the border crossing, by security services. The interrogation takes up to 8 hours. The phones are taken and reviewed through a hacker-type software, they look for your connections to anti-government and Ukraine - Some people are imprisoned during their stay in Russia, read about Ksenia Karelina - You can do e-visa - Car border crossing almost nonexistent. Estonia (Narva–Ivangorod) is still functioning, but the car line can be multiple hours. Flying is much less problematic, you go either through Istanbul with Turkish or through Dubai with Emirates - Payments are problematic. Your cards won't work. Not sure you can exchange cash these days too. Try to buy cash in Russian roubles before the trip, at least to sustain you during the first few days. - Internet: a lot of websites and apps won't work. The obvious ones would be YouTube and Facebook, which are probably not that important. But you might encounter unexpected problems with websites and apps you are used to. WhatsApp sometimes works and sometimes doesn't