Over 100,000 tourists from China visited Russia in Q1 2025 - Russian FSB's Border Service

MOSCOW. May 14 (Interfax) - Over 220,000 foreign tourists visited Russia in January-March 2025, and nearly half of them were Chinese citizens, as seen from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Border Service's statistics.

The number of foreign tourists who visited Russia in the first quarter of 2025 increased 4.6% to 228,800 compared to the same period last year, it said.

This number included 106,700 Chinese tourists, up 7.9% from 2024. Another 13,100 tourists came from Turkey (up 5% from 2024), 9,900 from Saudi Arabia (up 65%), 9,290 from Turkmenistan (down 41%), and 7,300 from Germany (down 12.9%)

The top-10 countries whose citizens visited Russia as tourists in January-March 2025 also included the United Arab Emirates (6,780 arrivals, down 6.7% compared with the same period in 2024), Iran and Cuba (4,800 arrivals each), India (4,450), Kazakhstan (3,550), and Kuwait (3,540).

Another 3,400 tourists came to Russia from Thailand, 10.7% more than in the first quarter of 2024.

The overall number of foreigners who visited Russia in the first three months of 2025 came to 3.59 million, down 5.8% from the same period in 2024, according to the Russian Border Service's statistics.