If we’re looking beyond the scope of potential spies and saboteurs, there are plenty of families, friends, and even just normal people who travel abroad. Being abroad opens them up to seeing things from a perspective outside the one that is controlled and even enforced within Russia.

Furthermore, ordinary people’s view of EU (and other countries outside Russia) is part of many pieces of this conflict’s puzzle: Money leaving Russia, people seeing good things in EU in contrast to their own country, and Kremlin being less able to make statements like “this country is showing hostility” or “See? EU only cares about itself”.

And ultimately, we do not want to unnecessarily sour the international relations more than necessary, as it’s required in a lot of ways for talks about resolutions both during and after the war. Kremlin might not care about this, given the things they do, but they’re not looking very far ahead. If they did, they wouldn’t wage war in the first place.

Because granting tourism visas is the default. What advantage would be gained by not giving them tourism visas?

Meloni is on Putin’s payroll.

Because some countries in the EU rely on tourism for their finances and do not want to risk reducing that income, even if it concerns only a small number or Russians. Those countries have so far blocked proposals to stop granting visas.