Russiable

If you hold a British, Irish, EU, Australian or New Zealand passport and you’re travelling to Mongolia as a tourist, you don’t need a visa in 2026 for stays of up to 30 days. Mongolia has extended its visa exemption for citizens of 34 countries, and it runs until 31 December 2026. Your passport is enough. If you’re American, the rules are different and more g...

Yes, you can travel to Belarus without a visa. If you hold a British, Irish or other European passport from a list of 38 countries, you can enter visa-free and stay up to 30 days, and since July 2024 you no longer have to arrive by plane: any international border crossing works, road, rail or airport. The scheme is renewed by presidential decree and is currently e...

Alican Kutlu spent five nights in Saint Petersburg in June 2026, on a regular tourist visa and in the middle of the White Nights. He wrote to me with a short list of the things that worried him before flying, and then went through them one by one to tell me what actually happened.

It is one of the most methodical accounts I have received: the airport, the hotel, pay...

Is Russia a safe country to visit right now? The honest answer has two sides. In terms of everyday safety, Moscow, Saint Petersburg or Kazan are cities with little street crime, plenty of police and cameras everywhere: practically every traveller who writes to me agrees they felt safer there than in many European capitals. But the context is another matter: the confli...

Саймон lives in the United States and he spent his Christmas holiday getting into Kaliningrad the hard way: a cheap flight to Gdansk, then overland. The crossing he had budgeted a few hours for took twelve. Getting back out was harder still, because Polish land borders had started turning away his nationality and he found out the day before he was due to travel.

Wha...