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Suzdal: why we removed these guides
Editorial Position
Updated:9 min1,728 words

Suzdal: why we removed these guides

Here there used to be four pieces: a one-day itinerary, a selection of museums, a long list of sights, and an overview of churches. All four have been removed in every language version, and the old URLs now redirect permanently to this page.

Let us say right away what this text will not contain. No itinerary, no schedules, no advice on how to plan your day. The reason is twofold. The formal one: starting January 1, 2026, a publisher based in the EU is prohibited from providing services directly related to tourism activities in Russia, including advertising such services. The substantive one: the city was sold as a journey to the country's historical memory, and working with that memory inside the country has in recent years moved from the category of undesirable to the category of criminally punishable.

💡 At a glance:

  • which four pieces were removed and what they covered
  • why the promise of a "journey into memory" no longer holds
  • what we will not write about, because we have no verified facts
  • which historic cities of Central Europe remain in our active sections
  • Last updated: 09/2026

Why we deleted these guides

The four texts followed the same pattern: a list of white-stone monuments, museum exhibitions, monastery ensembles, and a ready-made walking plan. Each of them had a practical component, and without it the material falls apart: a list of sights without a suggestion to visit them is a table of contents, not an article.

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022 (UN press release GA/12407, 03/02/2022). We believe that after that date, an editorial team based in the European Union cannot publish texts that organize travel to this country, and the size of the city changes nothing here.

The financial part of the argument goes like this. The share of oil and gas revenues in Russia's federal budget dropped to roughly 22 percent in 2025 and 2026, while the share of non-oil-and-gas revenues rose to roughly 78 percent (OSW Centre for Eastern Studies, 12/09/2025). A night's stay, museum tickets, and lunch in a small town fall squarely into that second category, and the amounts are irrelevant: what matters is not the size but the direction of the payment.

A journey into memory in a country where memory is put on trial

The entire point of the previous texts rested on a single promise: here you can touch ancient history, see it untouched, and leave with the feeling that the past has been preserved. That promise assumes that the country has people who preserve and study the past, and do so freely. Here is what happened to that assumption.

The human rights organization Memorial, which spent three decades collecting data on victims of political repression, was liquidated by court order, and in 2022 received the Nobel Peace Prize together with the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties and a Belarusian human rights defender (Nobel Committee background). In 2026, a Russian court designated the same organization as "extremist," meaning that working with this memory was moved into the criminal sphere (RFE/RL); the Nobel Committee condemned the decision (Al Jazeera, 04/08/2026).

This is not an isolated story but a system. The law on "undesirable organizations" has been in force since 2015 (EU Agency for Asylum), and at least 37 guilty verdicts have been handed down under Article 284.1 of the Russian Criminal Code for participating in the activities of such an organization (EU Agency for Asylum). More than 343 organizations have been designated "undesirable," and more than 1,173 entities and individuals are listed in the "foreign agents" register (Human Rights Watch, World Report 2026).

Hence our conclusion, and it is about the genre, not the city. A travel text about ancient walls offers the reader a highly curated version of the past: the one that suits the state. Everything that does not fit into that version cannot currently be studied in the same country without criminal risk. We are not willing to publish such a text and pretend that the other half does not exist.

What we are not claiming about Suzdal itself

A fair caveat is needed here. We have no verified facts linking this specific city to the war: no sanctions status for local businesses, no documented events we could point to. We are not looking for them after the fact, and we are not forcing the fit.

Our argument is therefore country-wide, and we state it as such. We are not writing that anything is produced in this city for the front, we are not attributing any positions to local museums, and we are not reporting what residents think. Everything said above concerns court and state decisions and is supported by links.

Such a caveat looks weaker than a striking local accusation, and we understand that. But an invented local argument would destroy trust in everything else in this text, and we prefer that every claim here can be verified through a link.

What this means for you

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 of 23.10.2025

EUR-Lex

Transition period

For contracts concluded before 24.10.2025, ended on 01.01.2026

Skadden, 11.2025

Guide services and routes

Explicitly named among those covered by the ban

Skadden, 11.2025

Criminal risk of participating in "undesirable" activity

At least 37 convictions under Article 284.1 of the Russian Criminal Code

EU Agency for Asylum

German Foreign Office advisory

"Vor Reisen in die Russische Föderation wird gewarnt"

Auswärtiges Amt

Where to go instead

The question readers brought to these four texts was about a small old town you can walk across in a day: churches, an open-air museum, a craft tradition, and quiet. The live sections of the site answer that: Poland with Krakow, Kazimierz Dolny, and Torun, Czechia with Kutna Hora, Telc, and Cesky Krumlov, Hungary with Eger and Szentendre, Germany with Quedlinburg, Bamberg, and Rothenburg. We do not name individual sites with schedules and prices here: that is the job of the live country sections, not this column.

The overall explanation for the decision across the whole section is collected in the column hub. Thematic neighbors on the same route: the position on Kolomna and the position on Yaroslavl.

Where we stand

We believe that traveling for historical memory makes sense where that memory is free. In our assessment, in a country where working with the memory of repression has become a criminal offense, a guide to an ancient city sells not history but its permitted version. We decided to remove all four pieces and explain why at the same address.

We do not think the architecture is at fault, and we are not calling on anyone to forget. The white-stone monuments will remain what they were, regardless of our decisions. Only one thing has changed: we no longer want to be the ones leading readers to them.

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

Published: September 3, 2026. Last updated: September 3, 2026.

⁉️🤔 Frequently asked questions

Twelfth-century churches have nothing to do with this. Why delete?

We did not delete churches, we deleted our own guides to visiting them. The difference is in the function of the text: a piece on the history of architecture is possible, while a day-trip itinerary with museums and opening hours is a service that is prohibited for a person from the EU, along with advertising it.

Are you saying something bad about the city itself?

No, and we say so explicitly. We have no verified facts linking this city to the war, we are not inventing any, and the entire argument in the text applies to the country as a whole.

Why couldn't you keep the text with a warning at the top?

Because such a page would still answer the same search query and lead to the same action, just with a fine-print disclaimer. We chose to put an explanation in its place instead.

Will you bring these guides back?

We make no promises with dates. The decision will be revisited when the grounds for it, listed in the sources block, change.

In short

Four pieces about Suzdal have been removed in full, and the old URLs now redirect here. The promise of a trip for authentic historical memory does not hold up to scrutiny: the organization that spent three decades collecting data on political repression and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 was designated "extremist" in Russia in 2026, more than 343 organizations have been declared "undesirable," and at least 37 sentences have been handed down under the article on participation in their activities. We have no verified facts about the city itself, and we say so plainly rather than bending the argument to fit. The legal framework applies regardless: from January 1, 2026, services related to tourism activities in Russia, and their advertising, are prohibited for a person from the EU. The historic cities of Central Europe that we continue to write about 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.