Recent entry/exit experience.

Raia, thank you for the write up.
I have another friend who has just returned, doing the same route (I have to confess that UZ Airways was also my recommendation) - and said they were a bit miffed by UZair experience on the way back: a long layover, and they made a mistake of going directly to the US-bound terminal, which has literally nothing in terms of shopping or entertainment, so they were stuck in a cramped space with limited seating and a bunch of large UZ families with loud children...

Still good to know the JFK-TAS-MOW route is viable - it is a good deal cheaper than alternatives.

Personally, I'd love a Trip Report. I'd love to visit Russia, but have written it off as unlikely in my lifetime.

Given the State department warnings regarding travel to Russia, given that Russia has arrested innocent Americans and held them as hostages, given that there is a hot war stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and given that Putin’s Russia is actively trying to sabotage free and fair elections in the US and rest of world and sowing misinformation, stirring hatred based on religion, race and ethnicity on the internet, my unsolicited advice to the Webmaster is this: Ban all posts that encourage or help travel to Russia until things change.

While Rick Steves rightly promotes travel, Russia (and North Korea) seem to be a bridge too far. It's Rick's site and if he disagrees, I certainly will still respect his position.

Hello David,

As a fellow poster, I understand how you feel - and, as a fellow poster, of course you have every right to. I would probably disagree with some of your "givens" - but that's okay too, given freedom of thought and opinion and all other freedoms supposedly enshrined in our constitution.

Just wanted to point out that threads like this do not encourage travel to Russia - if anything, they remind potential travelers of the difficulties they may encounter en route or at their destination. Nor do they go against any kind of law - traveling to Russia has not been deemed illegal (unlike, say, travel to Cuba - and I would still love to read trip reports from that country and hope to visit it myself).

All that said, what threads like this do achieve - is remind people that there is a country stretched over about 1/8th of the Earth's landmass out there, inhabited by people who are not vastly different from you and me (well, in my case - not at all different :-) They may have their issues and a government that is less than agreeable - but that is probably also true of many other places that you have no issues with.

I'd argue if I were, on a personal level, opposed to travel to Russia (Iran, DPRK, Turks and Caicos, Cuba, Hungary, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Mali, Ukraine, Belarus, Turkmenistan, Kiribati, etc, etc, etc) - I could always choose to abstain from checking new posts in these threads.

Win-win?

"my unsolicited advice to the Webmaster is this: Ban all posts that encourage or help travel to Russia until things change."

The reason why we don't ban it is because our community does such a good job of informing people of the risks of traveling to Russia at this time. I think it would be a disservice to remove such information. That doesn't mean all replies should do this as we still need to respect the OP's question.

As an aside, I typically do not permit "don't go" advice in this forum as an OP's topic shouldn't be an excuse to side track it with your issue du jour. However, it's different when there is risk of direct personal harm or harm of others. I accept David's post and appreciate the OP's cautionary notes.

There is a narrow lane for how travel to Russia can be discussed in this forum (including observance of guideline #7 re breaking laws), and we're doing that so far here. I have removed many posts and threads regarding Russia that did not fit this lane.

Let's give this thread back to the OP.

Got it, understood.