By Anna Nemtsova
MOSCOW — Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB, is preventing millions of Russians from going abroad. Its own officers have been told “nevyezdnye” (no foreign travel), and earlier this year it announced stricter border controls for those who want to leave the country, citing the “changed geopolitical situation.”
Several million Russians currently are banned, specifically, from travel to the United States, and more than two million cannot leave the country at all. The number of Russian citizens on so-called “stop lists” and state employees obliged to stay put after signing secrecy agreements ia growing rapidly.
So is concern among Russian elite that a new Iron Curtain, reminiscent of travel restrictions during Soviet times, has begun to descend.
Gennady Gudkov, a former officer with the Soviet KGB, predecessor of Russia’s FSB, blames a…
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