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Hotels in Kazan: why we removed these lists
Editorial Position
Updated:8 min1,571 words

Hotels in Kazan: why we removed these lists

Here there used to be four hotel roundups for Kazan: in the center with breakfast, mini-hotels, budget options, and separately accommodation with a pool. All four have been deleted across all language versions of the site.

The reason for this decision is twofold. The first applies to the entire section: starting January 1, 2026, a person from the European Union may not provide or advertise services directly related to tourism activities in Russia. The second applies specifically to Tatarstan: the republic's special economic zone produces strike drones used against Ukraine. The hotel roundup and this production are located in the same administrative unit, and our previous text was silent about that.

💡 At a glance:

  • which four roundups were deleted and what they contained
  • which EU legal rule prohibits not only selling but also advertising
  • what is known about drone production in the same republic and from which sources
  • which countries and cities remain in our live sections: Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia
  • Last updated: 09/2026

Why we deleted these guides

Four articles covered the city's demand in full: thirteen hotels in the center with breakfast, thirteen mini-hotels, fifteen budget options, and fifteen hotels with a pool. All of them were recommendation pieces by design: they compared offers and led the reader toward a choice. Removing the recommendation from such a text means removing the text, so this was not about editing but about taking the pages down.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022. After that date, our Kazan roundups continued to work as a commercial offer, and that was an editorial mistake, not technical inertia. All four have been removed, and the old URLs redirect here.

We need to be precise about the money, otherwise the argument falls apart. The share of oil and gas revenue in Russia's federal budget has fallen to roughly 22 percent, while the share of non-oil-and-gas revenue, which includes VAT and corporate profit tax from the services sector, has grown to roughly 78 percent (OSW Centre for Eastern Studies, 09.12.2025). The claim that "vacation money pays for oil rent" is wrong. What is true is different: a guest's spending lands exactly in the part of the budget whose weight today is higher than before the war.

What EU law prohibits

Council Regulation (EU) 2025/2033 of October 23, 2025 replaced paragraph 2 of Article 5n of Regulation 833/2014 with a direct ban on providing services directly related to tourism activities in Russia (EUR-Lex). The transition period for previously concluded contracts ended on January 1, 2026 (Skadden, 11.2025).

The list of covered services includes travel agency and tour operator services, tour guide services, and advertising services related to them (Skadden, 11.2025). The ban also extends to online platforms and apps that allow booking and selling tickets (Fieldfisher). The stated purpose of the rule is explicit: to reduce the revenue Russia receives from such services and to curb the promotion of non-essential travel and leisure in the country (Skadden, 11.2025).

Let us also add what makes a hotel text pointless in practice. Visa and Mastercard suspended operations in Russia on March 10, 2022, and cards issued outside the country do not work there (The Moscow Times, 06.03.2022).

What is produced in the same republic

This is where the part begins that our previous texts did not have in any version.

In the Alabuga special economic zone in Yelabuga, Republic of Tatarstan, strike drones of the Iranian Shahed-136 design are produced, which Russia calls "Geran-2" and uses against Ukraine (Iran Watch, facility research). From January through September 2024, more than 5,700 such drones were produced there, more than twice as many as in all of 2023 (Iran Watch).

We mention this not to link a specific hotel to a specific production line: we do not claim such a link and cannot claim it. We mention this because a tourism text must name the context of the place it writes about, and our previous text described the republic exclusively as a weekend destination with a good breakfast.

Let us separately state what this text does not and will not contain. This is about a facility and about decisions made by the authorities, not about the residents of the republic and not about any ethnic group. We do not make and do not support any generalizations of that kind.

We should also say why the four articles did not remain in the archive with a warning at the top. An archived page keeps living in search results and answering the same query, just with a fine-print disclaimer: a reader looking for an inexpensive hotel in the center would have gotten a list of inexpensive hotels in the center. We consider redirecting to an explanation more honest than an archive label, and we apply this rule to all texts in the section without exception.

What this means for you as an EU reader

Item

Status 09/2026

Source

Services related to tourism in Russia

Prohibited by Article 5n(2) of Regulation 833/2014 as amended by Regulation 2025/2033

EUR-Lex

What the list includes

Travel agency and tour operator services, guide services, and advertising of these services

Skadden, 11.2025

Online platforms

Covered by the prohibition on the same basis as agency services

Fieldfisher

Transition period

Ended 01.01.2026

Skadden, 11.2025

Paying with an EU card

Impossible since 10.03.2022

The Moscow Times

German Foreign Office advisory

"Vor Reisen in die Russische Föderation wird gewarnt"

Auswärtiges Amt

We do not write about how to get around these circumstances: this section does not help with trip planning.

Where to go instead

The request was for an inexpensive city weekend with Eastern architecture, good food, and a historic center that can be done in two days. The live sections of the site answer that: Turkey with Istanbul, Azerbaijan with Baku, Armenia, and Georgia. For those who came looking for a combination of minarets and fortress walls in a single city skyline, Istanbul and Baku are the closest match.

The editorial team's overall explanation for the entire section is collected in the section hub. Related texts: our position on the city's museums and tours and our position on the kremlin and the mosque.

Where we stand

We believe that a hotel selection is a financial recommendation, not a description of a city, and that publishing it from the European Union is currently impossible both legally and on the merits. In our assessment, a separate problem with our previous texts was that they described the republic as an exclusively tourist destination, while verifiable information about the production discussed above exists and is available.

We also do not name any hotel from the previous lists and do not evaluate any of them. A named hotel in an explanatory text still reads as a recommendation.

We write about a state and its policies, not about people based on their passport. There are people in Russia who came out against the war and received prison sentences for it. Our decision not to publish guides to Russia is about money, sanctions, and reader safety, not about nationality.

Publication date: September 3, 2026. Last updated: September 3, 2026.

⁉️🤔 Frequently asked questions

Are you linking hotels to drone production?

No. We do not claim such a link and have no basis for it.

Is this a criticism of the republic's residents?

No, and we state this directly in the text. Our materials in this section contain no claims about residents or about any ethnic or religious group.

Why were budget hotel roundups also deleted? There is no luxury in them.

Because the decision concerns the function of the text, not the price. All four articles compared options and guided readers toward a choice, and that function falls within the list of covered services.

Where does the production data come from?

From an Iran Watch study devoted to this facility. Both figures, the output for nine months of 2024 and the comparison with 2023, are taken from there.

Will you bring these roundups back?

We make no promises with dates. The decision will be revisited when the grounds described in the sections on EU law and drone production change.

In short

Four Kazan hotel roundups have been deleted in full. Regulation 2025/2033 directly prohibits services related to tourism activities in Russia, including advertising them. The Alabuga special economic zone in the same republic produces Iranian-designed attack drones used against Ukraine: more than 5,700 units from January through September 2024, more than twice as many as in all of 2023. The cities we continue to cover are listed above.

How you can help

We do not collect money and receive nothing from the links below. These are official websites of organizations working with the consequences of the war:

Sources

Link check date: 03.09.2026.

tourism.com.de Editorial Team
tourism.com.de Editorial TeamTravel editorial team: research, fact-checking, updates→ All publications

A small editorial team writing guides for independent travel. We travel ourselves, but we haven’t been everywhere, so we check prices, opening hours and how to get there against official sources.