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Data presented by the Polish Border Guard show that the amount of people going across the border from Poland to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad has dramatically decreased.
Last year, guards processed over 364,000 travellers, including 136,000 Russians and over 40,000 Poles, through Poland’s two checkpoints with the enclave.
In 2015, Border Guard reported over 6 million travellers to the Polish Press Agency (PAP) on Tuesday. This high number was largely due to the local border traffic agreement which facilitated Russian border crossings without requiring a visa.
The agreement was suspended in 2016, however in 2019 over three million travellers still crossed the border.
But now Russians are subject to strict restrictions on travel into Poland and the EU, and the Border Guard said that those now crossing the border have residence permits in the EU.
Currently, there are only two operating checkpoints between Poland and Kaliningrad, in Grzechotki and Bezledy, after the 2020 closure of checkpoints in Goldap and Gronowo.