The number of trips of foreign citizens to Russia, taking into account all purposes of the visit, increased by 11.5 percent in January-June 2024 compared to the same period last year. FSB data say.
Over the first six months of 2024, foreigners crossed the Russian border 7.9 million times — the number of entries in the first half of last year was 7.1 million.
Most often in the first half of 2024 foreigners entered Russia from neighboring countries. The absolute leader in entry into Russia in the first half of the year was Uzbekistan — residents of this country entered 1.8 million times, which is 6 percent more than last year.
In the top three leaders in entry are traditionally citizens of Kazakhstan — 1.5 million trips (plus 8 percent year-on-year) and Tajikistan — 977,000 (minus 8 percent).
Kyrgyzstan was among the top five CIS countries that most often chose Russia for trips — 550,000 people during the reporting period (510,900 people in 2023).
Of the non-CIS countries, China was among the top ten countries whose citizens most often visited Russia during the reporting period — the number of trips from there increased by 2.7 times to 700,600 trips (263,800 trips a year ago).
The statistics of the FSB Border Service take into account the number of crossings of the state border by foreign and Russian citizens, taking into account several purposes of the visit. For example, the FSB distributes data on trips for business purposes, work, tourism, private, education, for the purpose of moving to a permanent place of residence, as well as «vehicle maintenance» and «military personnel». According to the methodology, if the same citizen repeatedly traveled outside the country during the reporting period, then the FSB data includes him or her as many times as they crossed the state border in one direction.
