Tatiana Ageeva, Director of the Grumant Arctic Tourism Center, announced plans to open a new visa-free destination in Europe and launch direct flights from Russia to Svalbard.

According to her, Grumant is negotiating the organization of direct air flights from Moscow and Murmansk, and is also working on the implementation of the opportunity to get to Svalbard by sea from the port of Murmansk. This will allow, firstly, to actually open a new visa-free destination for Russians, and secondly, it will make travel to Svalbard much cheaper.

Today, Russians wishing to visit the Svalbard archipelago have to deal not only with independent travel planning, but also with the visa issue. Formally, the archipelago is not included in the Schengen zone, and Russian citizens do not need a visa to visit it.

However, due to the lack of direct communication, it is possible to get there only through the territory of Norway - with the corresponding requirement for tourists to have entry visas (and Norway does not issue them to Russians). And even for holders of Schengen visas, the route requires several transfers: for example, you first need to get from Murmansk by bus to the airport in Kirkenes (Norway), then fly to Oslo, and finally go from there to Longyearbyen.

As a result, the tourist flow from Russia to the archipelago is minimal: despite the fact that about 70.000 tourists visit Svalbard annually, only a few hundred of them are Russians, goarctic.runotes.