Russia will not resume access to electronic visas for foreigners

Access to e-visas by foreigners was suspended last year amid the spread of the Coronavirus. According to the Director of the Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,

Russia will not yet open the possibility of obtaining electronic visas to foreigners due to unfriendly actions of European countries. This was stated in an interview with TASS by the director of the consular department of the Russian Foreign Ministry Ivan Volynkin.

He recalled that in March 2022, European countries unilaterally partially suspended agreements on the facilitation of travel for citizens, and also tightened general approaches to issuing visas to Russians.

“As part of the response measures that were developed to these openly unfriendly actions, <...> a decision was made regardless of the continuation or cancellation of government order No. 635-r (the document excluded the possibility of issuing electronic visas to foreigners against the backdrop of the spread of coronavirus. — ) to carry out further monitoring of the development of the international situation, not yet opening an Internet portal for issuing unified electronic visas,” the diplomat noted.

Volynkin also explained that the main obstacles for foreigners to travel to Russia remain transport logistics and the high cost of tickets, and not the process of obtaining a visa. “For example, in the first four months of 2022, 20 times fewer visas were issued to citizens of EU countries than in the same period in 2019,” he said.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs spoke about electronic visas for vaccine tourists Society

After the start of a special operation in Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the Czech Republic decided to temporarily stop issuing visas and residence permits to Russians, in June Prague extended the restrictions until 2023. Earlier, the idea of ​​suspending the issuance of visas was also supported by the Finnish Parliament.

At the same time, after the removal of COVID travel restrictions from both Europe and Russia, Russians have an increased demand for visas to the EU, RBC wrote. In mid-July, one and a half month queues arose at the visa centers for the issuance of entry documents. At the same time, experts interviewed by RBC noted that the demand was superimposed on the lack of employees of visa centers.

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Before the pandemic, Russia topped the list of countries whose citizens applied for a visa to the Schengen countries. In 2019, Russians submitted about 4 million applications for Schengen visas, or more than 23% of all applications. In 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic began and many countries closed their borders, 635,000 Schengen visas were issued to Russians.

Moscow called the restrictions from the West illegitimate and more than once since the beginning of the special operation in Ukraine recalled ambassadors from European states. Also, the Russian Foreign Ministry did not rule out the introduction of a visa regime with Ukraine, a visa-free regime with which has been in effect since 1997.

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