So, I just got my passport back from the Russian consulate in Seattle. Total turn around time from when the FedEx was received and when I got it back in the mail via priority mail was 9 days (I paid $131 for the cheapest service).

Checking over the visa, I see that it is a different style than what I got before. They're not using the orange ones (like my previous two) - this one looks more pinkish, kinda like Russian money. Also has a hologram - old one had no hologram. I also see that although the visa type is tourist, the # for this type of visa is different than before. Now it's 004 and before it was 690 or something.

On the app form, I had checked "multiple entry" and also mentioned this in my cover letter. However, nowhere on this visa can I find anything about single or multiple entry. The older style visa said if it were single or multiple right on it. So, does anyone know for sure if they are no longer doing this - and if the visa can be used for multiple entries, within the validity period?

On a related note - this visa uses the last blank page in my passport. When I come back from this trip, I'll have to send my passport off to have new pages added. I wonder if they will tell me I have to get a whole new passport instead, since mine doesn't have RFID chip in it.

Cheers!
AKDiver

I hope they don't make you get a new passport, because i'm going in tomorrow to get new pages in mine which lacks a chip and i don't want a new passport either.

all of the russian visas ive ever seen, with the exception of my green year-long student visa which wasn't affixed to my passport, have been this pinkish one. When was your last russian visa? the only tourist visa they make is a 30-day, single-entry visa. my most recent tourist visa says "однократная." you have a single entry tourist visa if it is 004. you can check all the boxes you want, but they're definitely not going to give you a multi-entry tourist visa cause they don't exist.

you could have bought a multi-entry business visa, but now there's more severe limitations on it. you can only be in the russian federation for every ninety out of 180 days or something like that.

The way it reads at the Russian Embassy website, you are technically correct, however, a double entry visa is possible for a tourist visa. But that is it, You cant come and go as many times as you want like with a mult entry business visa. I was under the impression that the однократна� meant that it was a single entry, I didnt know about the 004.

Also, How did you get the cyrillic to come in correctly? Mine looks like jibberish.

Congratulations.

Okay, so I just figured this out the other day. If you post something in Cyrillic, and then use Quick Edit after you post, it will bork it all up. You have to do Full Edit if you want it to edit correctly.

Mine always works. I'm on a mac using the russian version of firefox.

Interesting. I'm on a Mac too, but using English version of Firefox.

Does your cyrillic input work when you type something into google or whatever? mine came out as question marks, which is why i have the russian version.

Yeah, Cyrillic comes up as question marks in Google for me. It's kind of a pain, but I don't do a lot of searches in Cyrillic anyway so it's not a problem. Safari shows Cyrillic correctly though.

2005 and 2004. Both were somewhat orangeish.

Not true. My previous visa was a double entry tourist visa - and yes, I made two entries on it.

Anyway - wife says this one is double-entry as well. The difference between this visa style and the previous one is that the previous had text on the form indicating entry-type, and then the computer print next to it, essentially filling in the blank. This one one just has the computer text, without the pre-printed info on the visa itself.

So, its double entry. (:

wow i had never noticed double-entry before... hm. good to know! but double is still different from multi-entry, where there's no limit.

but if your last visa is from 2005 there have been a ton of changes to the visa/registration laws, so anyone remembers about russian visas from before january 2008 applies anymore. no more jaunting off to finland to get a russian visa in a day, unless you are allowed to be in finland for more than 3 months.

All the question mark crap started after I downloaded the latest update to Firefox. I switched back to Safari and have no problem seeing the Cyrillic now. (Although some times I have to manually switch the text encoding in my menu.)

I found this fix on the macoxhints site:

A lot of people haved reported a problem with Firefox on Leopard, where Firefox was no longer displaying Cyrillic characters on buttons, in form input fields, tabs, and page titles. Instead, question marks appeared everywhere.

Here is a temporary fix ... quit Firefox, go to you Applications folder (or wherever you keep Firefox), Control-Click on the Firefox icon and choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. Go into Contents » Resources, and rename en.lproj to ru.lproj. Start Firefox, and everything should work like it did before Leopard.

Note: There is, however, one small side effect: Your main Firefox menu will appear in Russian, instead of English. All other menus and preference panes will still appear in English.

This fix will probably have to be re-applied after each Firefox update, if they don't fix this problem upstream.

I'm at work right now, so I don't have access to my Mac. I'll give it a try when I get home and report back.

Basically that fix just makes firefox into the russian version, so you can just go to mozilla.ru (i think) and get the same thing but have automatic updates. That's what i have now.