vbtwo

For her, she will always remain a Russian citizen when dealing with Russia unless she specifically denounces her citizenship. Thus she must maintain her Russian passport and must use it when entering Russia. Even when she becomes a US citizen, she cannot use her US passport to enter Russia and must use the Russian one. You will need a visa.

You are in VSC. Everybody that got approved this month is in CSC. VSC have not approved anybody from May yet. They will not approve anybody from May for at least another few months. There is no point of calling them or asking about status. We should hopefully see some movement from VSC closer to next May or so. VSC is really slow.

If you have no income whatsoever, you are not required to file. You can if you want, but you are not required.

Just came in to Ukraine again with my US passport. When the officer saw my previous 3 pairs of entry/exit stamps within the year, he did a double take. This is the first time I have ever seen a Ukraine immigration officer show any emotion at all. He then shrugged, put another stamp in and told me have a nice day. This is also the first time I have ever heard a Ukraine immigration officer speak.

For RoC, the petitioner is you - the person that got the K1 visa and the conditional GC. It is not your spouse, even though (s)he was the petitioner when applying for the visa. The terms are all reversed now at this stage, as your spouse really has nothing to do with RoC except as proof that you married in good faith. It is you who is applying to remove conditions on your GC, not your spouse that is applying for you.

At our local office, they just told everyone to turn phones off, but you are allowed to bring it in. There is no airport style security there, just some guy sitting at a desk telling everyone to turn phones off.
Keep posting in this thread.

From what I read, Moscow is pretty easy for K1 and the petitioner is not required at all. If you have good relationship evidence, then it's fine.

Just know that UIA is a pretty much no-frills airline and you will get the most barebones of service. Oldish planes, no individual TV screens, etc. Still a lot better than the old AeroSvit used to be, at least UIA did not give me the cold portion of my meal frozen solid like AeroSvit did. On the plus side, they will allow 2 suitcases per person as opposed to 1 suitcase that most European airlines will allow.

You do not need to wait for a letter from the embassy. As long as your status on the Department of State site says READY, you can schedule the interview. My fiancee received a letter from the embassy a few days after we already had our interview. It is not required at all, nobody asked for it anywhere. To get into the embassy you will need a printout of the scheduled interview confirmation page that you will get after you schedule the interview.

You put the name that is on the passport. The airlines will check the passport to match the name to the ticket. When you get back to the US and show the border control person the green card with the new name, they don't care what the name on the ticket was anymore. Otherwise, you just show the passport everywhere (except also have to show green card at check in when coming back so airline knows you have a way of getting into the US).

Just make sure it's in a logical order (ie, forms, then proof of citizenship, then proof of meeting, or something like that) and that things are not lost easily (thus put photos in a bag so that tiny passport photos don't fall out and get lost).
From reading here, people have sent in all different kinds of things and it doesn't really matter as to how it's done as long as they can figure out what everything is. Make sure to list everything you're sending in a cover letter (ie, list what proof you're sending for proving citizenship, what you're sending for proving meeting, etc)
I did not use any folders or binders. I sent it in in the following order: G-1145 on top, check, cover letter, all forms starting with I-129F, letters of intent, proof of citizenship (all pages in passport), proof of meeting (plane tickets/boarding passes, etc), photos in a plastic bag.

Nothing really to note at regarding Kyiv embassy. It's very easy for K1 visas as long as all your paperwork is in order. They have a great PDF in English and Ukrainian on their site explaining everything you need to do and what to bring.
There are no packet 3/4 for Ukraine. As soon as they receive the paperwork from the NVC, you can go online to schedule the interview and you bring everything to the interview.

No, it's not true at all.
You bring the passport with you to the interview and when you're approved, then they keep it for a couple of days to put the visa in it and then return it. There's no way around them keeping it for a few days, but if you stay in Moscow, they should be able to return it to you within 2-3 days or so.

K1 at NVC takes a week or so normally. All NVC does is assign a KEV number and forward it over to the embassy. Call the NVC every day after a week passes until they give you your KEV number. Then you can check status online and see when they send it off to the embassy.
You do not need to wait for a letter from the embassy. All it does is delay everything by about a month. All the letter says is to go online to their site to get all the info. Just go to the Ukraine embassy site and they have a PDF there with exact instructions on what needs to be done and what documents you'll need to bring to the interview and how to pay and how to schedule. Once the status says Ready, it means it's at the embassy and you can go ahead and schedule the interview.
You can do the medical the day before the interview (get there early, like 8am, and you get the results that same day). You do need some piece of paper with the KEV number on it. You can use the letter the NVC sends you with the case number (a copy is ok, scan it, email it to your fiancee, and print it out). Some people had good results by just making up their own letter, as long as they put the number on it.
My fiancee got the letter from the embassy a few days after we already passed the interview (and we didn't even rush with getting the earliest interview date, scheduled interview about 3 weeks out), so there is no reason whatsoever to wait for it.

Aerosvit went bankrupt and doesn't exist since 2 years ago. If you fly via Ukraine International Airlines or Aeroflot (with transfer in Moscow), you can also bring 2 suitcases at 23kg each (Aeroflot doesn't really care about overweight bags either until you get above 26-27kg or so, so you can bring 2 suitcases at 26kg each without issues, they'll just mark them as 23kg). They also do not weigh your carry-on so as long as it's not too huge, you can bring gold bricks aboard and they won't care.

I would recommend getting tickets in the maiden name that matches the passport. As that is what they say everywhere when buying tickets (name must match passport), and it is the passport that the airline workers will look at when you check in (they might ask to see GC just to make sure she has a way to enter the US, but mainly they deal with the passport).
Bring your marriage certificate which proves the name change in case the US officer will ask about mismatch in name between passport and GC. This is what we did when my wife traveled on AP, and had no problems. They didn't even ask about name mismatch as you can see that it's the same person in photos on both documents.

If it says ready, it got there. There's no need to call or email them, just schedule the interview. I've never heard of anybody not being able to interview if they scheduled after it said ready.

If your medical was done not in flu season, you do not need flu shots even though you're filing for AOS during the flu season. So if you have DS 3025 with everything filled out, you do not need anything else, just send in a copy of it and it's fine. My wife had medical done in the summer without a flu shot and we filed for AOS in January and just sent in DS 3025 and got approved without any hassles.

Put it as in the international passport, so no patronymic. Patronymic is not the same as middle name in the US. We did not put it on any forms. When we went in for the interview in the embassy, the Ukrainian person collecting the forms told us to put patronymic into the middle name field, but the visa did not have the patronymic anyway (this was before they switched to using online-submitted DS-260). So you can just ignore the patronymic and nobody will care.

Yes, we used AP card (as GC came while we were in Ukraine). It had married name on it, her passport had maiden name. No problems whatsoever, nobody asked us about it, not in Ukraine, not in the US. When coming in, don't show any US cards at all, just Ukrainian passport. When leaving, you only need to show the US card to airline officials during check-in and then in the US to immigration officer. You don't need to show it in Ukraine to customs or passport control. From what I've read here we aren't the only ones to have traveled using different name on the documents, there are a lot of people here that never bothered to change anything in their foreign passports. Have your marriage certificate with you just in case you're asked about it.

Boom! Green card has been mailed today! So everyone that got an interview waiver, you should hear something soon.

It's very quick. You go in to the interview and they tell you if you're approved or not on the spot. Interview dates are available for pretty much any day. If approved, it will take a couple of days for them to put the visa in the passport and then maybe a couple more days to deliver to your city if you're not picking up in Kiev (not more than a week or so).

You should be fine. I also heard absolutely nothing, and it just sat at Acceptance and Initial Review, but then it just changed to approved/card production for AP and EAD last Friday. So in a short while, it should also just get approved by you. There are no intermediate steps for AP and EAD (unless you get an RFE, but that is unlikely by now if you haven't gotten it yet) and it just goes from initial review to approved.

Our AP and EAD changed to approved / card production on March 7.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrZcAsPKK74