The Border Guard Service of Russia has published fresh statistics on the departure of Russian citizens abroad in the first half of 2022. In total, in January-June 2022, citizens of the Russian Federation made 8 453 846 trips abroad.
This is almost a quarter (+24,55%) more than in January-June 2021. But the main contribution to this increase was made not by spring-summer period, but by the winter months of the first quarter, when many warm countries lifted covid restrictions. Thus, the increase of outbound traffic in the first quarter amounted to +46,7% compared to 2021, and in the second quarter it was only +10,9%.
However, the outbound flow from the Russian Federation is still very far from pre-pandemic volumes: in the first half of 2022, it was 60,14% less than in the same period of 2019. Moreover, the decrease from pre-Covid indicators in the first quarter was -53,7%, and in the second quarter it was even more (-64,34%) compared to the same periods in 2019.
Almost 40% growth is provided by Turkey, Egypt and the Emirates.
The situation with European countries is quite different. Thus, in the first half of 2022, the number of arrivals of Russians decreased from 25% to 50% compared to the covid 2021 in Italy, Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Cyprus, Greece, Switzerland, Great Britain, Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Belgium and Sweden. An even greater decline was shown by Malta, Montenegro, Iceland and Albania.
