Some 15.4 mln foreign citizens visit Russia in 2023

MOSCOW. Feb 5 (Interfax) - Russia has recorded 15.4 million visits by foreigners in 2023, including 670,690 for tourism purposes, the Border Service of the Russian Federal Security Service's statistics say.

The top three for all purposes were Kazakhstan (3.16 million), followed by Uzbekistan (3.1 million) and Tajikistan (2.12 million) in third place. Next were Kyrgyzstan (1.14 million), China (794,400), Abkhazia (764,700), Armenia (616,600), Azerbaijan (476,700), Belarus (414,700) and Moldova (118,450).

Compared to 2022, the total number of trips by foreigners increased by 15.7%.

As for tourism, the number of such trips more than doubled from 200,000 in 2022 to 670,700 in 2023. This was still 86.7% below the pre-pandemic 2019 level.

In this category, the leader by a large margin was China, from where Russia welcomed 199,800 visitors, with Germany in second place (55,800) and Turkey third (47,500). The other in the top ten were the United Arab Emirates (42,470), Turkmenistan (33,700), Iran (29,500), Kazakhstan (16,290), India (14,600), Estonia (14,500) and Latvia (13,200).