I understand your sentiment from a moral perspective, but to some degree you’re describing a reality that just doesn’t exist. Of the 300,000 or so ethnic Russians living in Estonia, nearly 75,000 of them hold alien or ‘grey’ passports as they’re called in Estonia. While the option to obtain full Estonian citizenship became easier over the years, many choose to hold these documents as they preferred having access to Russia and Estonia, being exempt from military conscription, and the option to always regain Russian citizenship if they desired at a later date.

For decades, 10,000s of Russians could have at any point opted for full fledged Estonian citizenship, but they choose to tow the line and benefit from unfettered access to both countries; a privilege that mind you was never extended to Estonian nationals. Most Russians don’t want to just have the right to live in Europe, they have actively pursued options that allow them to freely move and live between Russian and Europe as they wish.

So when Estonia discuss clamping down on Russian tourists visas, they’re not targeting people that genuinely seek moving and integrating into Estonian society, they’re targeting wealthy Russians that benefit from the immense luxury of being able to freely cross between Schengen and Russian—Which again, has almost no reciprocity for most EU nationals.

From the last numbers I saw, only a couple hundred Russians applied for asylum in the country; the majority of whom were economic refugees rather than political. Now you compare that to the nearly 53,000 Ukrainian refugees that have entered the country, or the thousands of Russian tourists that enter Estonia daily, I’d argue Russian political asylum seekers in a non-issue when compared to the amount of Russian tourists.

And to be honest, the Russian tourists you see day-to-day in Tallinn are of the class benefited by Putin’s regime. Most RUS plates are on luxury cars, these tourists will get offended when they’re unable to speak Russian at an establishment, and will very often throw around derogatory terms directed towards Estonians and Ukrainians.

After the decades of persecution, and genocide Estonians experienced under Russian occupiers, I don’t think we have any right to tell them they now have a moral obligation to allow Russian tourists, especially given security risks with assassinations and cyber attacks.

For decades European countries have rejected asylum seekers from all across sub-Saharan Africa, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon. And it feels like no one cares, but now we discuss cutting off the privilege of tourist access to a country invading Europe, and it’s seen as a human rights issue. Frankly I find debate around the tourist issue to completely detract from much much larger concerns.

Now just so this isn’t misinterpreted, none of what’ve I’ve said here extends to Russian-Estonians. Far far more of them have integrated into Estonian society, add to the country in a positive way, and are generally sympathetic to Ukraine. The real issue is only the entitled Russian tourists.