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Museums and excursions in Kazan: why we removed these materialsAIIllustrative image: AI-generated
Editorial Position
Updated:8 min1,642 words

Museums and excursions in Kazan: why we removed these materials

Here lay Kazan's entire sightseeing program: forty landmarks, thirty museums, twenty-five tours, a two-day itinerary, twenty activities for children, and a seasonal December overview. Six pieces, all removed across every language version.

A direct answer to the query people come here with. We no longer publish sightseeing content about Kazan, not because the city got worse, but because the observer position itself stopped working. The republic whose tourism showcase we described hosted the BRICS summit in October 2024. This was Russia's largest international event since the start of the full-scale invasion. The same republic also produces strike drones used against Ukraine. There are no routes, schedules, or prices here.

💡 At a glance:

  • which six pieces were removed and what they covered
  • what happened in Kazan in October 2024 and why we call it a showcase
  • what is documented about production in the same republic and by whom exactly
  • which live sections of the site answer the same query
  • Last updated: 09/2026

Why we deleted these guides

Six texts covered the reader's entire journey from initial interest to a ready-made trip: a list of landmarks, a museum catalog, a selection of tours, a ready two-day itinerary, a program for families with children, and a seasonal overview with prices. All addresses now redirect here.

The financial framing of this text is shared with the rest of the section, and we state it precisely. Pointing to oil and gas here would be incorrect: their share of Russia's federal budget has dropped to roughly 22 percent, down from 42 percent in 2022. The reverse matters: about 78 percent of the budget comes from non-oil-and-gas revenue, which includes taxes from the services sector (OSW Centre for Eastern Studies, 12/09/2025). Tourist money lands exactly there. The decision dates back to February 24, 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine (UN press release GA/12407, 03/02/2022).

The showcase: October 2024

From October 22 to 24, 2024, Kazan hosted the BRICS summit, the largest international event held by the president of Russia since the start of the full-scale invasion (Al Jazeera, 10/22/2024; Foreign Policy, 10/22/2024). The city was not chosen by accident: it had long been marketed as a convenient and polished showcase, and we ourselves participated in that genre with six texts.

The summit took place a year and a half after the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants on March 17, 2023, for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights Maria Lvova-Belova on suspicion of the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children) and unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation, under articles 8(2)(a)(vii) and 8(2)(b)(viii) of the Rome Statute (UN News, 03/17/2023). A warrant is a procedural decision, not a verdict: article 66 of the Rome Statute establishes the presumption of innocence, and we adhere to exactly that wording.

The UN Secretary-General's participation in the summit drew criticism from Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs: he did not accept the invitation to the peace summit in Switzerland in June 2024, but did accept the invitation to Kazan (Al Jazeera, 10/22/2024). We cite this as a fact of dispute between state bodies, not as our own assessment of the UN's work.

What is produced in the same republic

The Alabuga special economic zone in Yelabuga, Republic of Tatarstan, produces Iranian-designed Shahed-136 strike drones, known in Russia as Geran-2 and used against Ukraine (Iran Watch, facility research). From January through September 2024, more than 5,700 such drones were produced there, more than double the total for all of 2023 (ibid.).

CNN documented the practice of recruiting teenagers through a college at this production facility, as well as bringing in women from African countries under an overseas hiring program to cover labor shortages (CNN, 07/25/2025). We relay this exactly to the extent established by the source, without generalizations and without added assessments.

The results of using this product are documented by UN monitoring bodies. From December 2025 through May 2026, at least 423 attacks on electricity generation, transmission, and distribution facilities and at least 74 strikes on heating facilities were recorded (UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine). Between a two-day sightseeing itinerary and this summary lies one republic and one budget.

What this means for you as an EU reader

Item

Status as of 09/2026

Source

Services related to tourism in Russia

Prohibited by Article 5n(2) of Regulation 833/2014 as amended by Regulation 2025/2033 of 10/23/2025

EUR-Lex

What the ban covers

Services of travel agencies and tour operators, work of tour guides, advertising of these services

Skadden, 11/2025

Transition period

Ended 01/01/2026, no exceptions remain

EUR-Lex

German Foreign Office advisory

"Vor Reisen in die Russische Föderation wird gewarnt"

Auswärtiges Amt

Risk for German citizens

Danger of arbitrary detention, including for dual citizens

Auswärtiges Amt

The second row of the table describes our deleted texts almost verbatim. The collection of twenty-five excursions did the work of a tour guide and an agent, and the two-day itinerary did the work of a tour operator. That is exactly why we say this is a matter of compliance, not editorial taste.

Where to go instead

Readers came here for Eastern architecture, minarets next to Orthodox domes, museums, and a city that is easy to cover in two days. The live sections of the site fully answer that need: Turkey with Istanbul and Bursa, Azerbaijan with Baku and Sheki, Armenia with Yerevan and its monasteries, Georgia with Tbilisi, Uzbekistan with Samarkand and Bukhara, Bosnia and Herzegovina with Sarajevo. For readers who specifically wanted the combination of Turkic and European tradition in one city, Istanbul and Sarajevo come closest.

Related texts in this section: our position on the Kazan Kremlin and our position on Kazan hotels. The overall explanation of the editorial decision is collected in the section hub.

Where we stand

We believe that a sightseeing text is the most political of travel genres, even though it looks the most harmless. It does not describe a city, it presents it: here is what is worth seeing, here is the order, here is how long it will take. In our assessment, presenting a city in this way when that city is used as a platform for international legitimation means participating in that legitimation for free and voluntarily.

We decided not to keep the "cultural" parts of the materials and not to rewrite them as historical essays. Our texts were catalogs with addresses and prices, not essays, and we will not pretend they are the same thing.

We write about the 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 nationality.

⁉️🤔 Frequently asked questions

Museums and mosques exist independently of politics. Why did you delete the texts about them?

The sites do exist, and we make no claims about them. We are responsible for the format: a catalog of museums with prices and a route is an invitation to go. The EU ban lists tour guide services and advertising of such services among the covered services, and our texts performed both functions.

Are you claiming that residents of Tatarstan are involved in drone production?

No, and there is no such claim in the text. We name the facility, the republic, and what Iran Watch and CNN have documented, without making any generalizations about residents. The criticism is directed at state decisions, not at the region's population.

Why do you mention the International Criminal Court warrant in a text about excursions?

Because the summit in Kazan took place after the warrant was issued, and without that date the picture is incomplete. We cite the warrant as a procedural document with article numbers and separately emphasize that it is not a conviction.

What should a reader do who has already gathered materials based on your old texts?

We do not give travel advice or describe procedures. All we can share is official positions: Germany's Federal Foreign Office warns against travel to Russia and cautions about the risk of arbitrary detention, and services related to tourism activities in the country are prohibited for persons from the EU.

In short

Six Kazan articles have been removed in full: sights, museums, excursions, a two-day itinerary, a children's program, and a December overview. In October 2024 the city hosted the BRICS summit. The same republic is home to production of strike drones. Viable destinations with eastern architecture and museums 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.

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