RodIllinois

I apologize for taking so long to respond.

Yes, your fiance must travel to Ukraine to pay at Raiffeisen Bank. However, there is not much of a wait these days for appointments. Once she pays for the visa, she can probably schedule the appointment within a day or 2. So she could travel to Kiev to pay for the visa, then immediately schedule the appointment a day or 2 later. That is what the embassy advised us to do, but my fiancee needed to go to Kiev anyway in June so I sent money to her by Western Union which she picked up at Raiffeisen Bank and paid for the visa while she was there. When she paid for the visa, we could have scheduled the interview 2 days later. We chose instead to wait for me to come to Kiev with her in July for her interview.

I would suggest sending an email to the embassy asking what they advise and how long the wait is for a fiancee visa appointment. Include the case number in the email subject, something like this:

Case Number: KEV 2014123456/ K-1 Visa Application

The email address is: KyivIV@state.gov

They are generally good about responding within a couple of business days.

Don't forget you will also need to schedule the medical exam in Kiev a couple of days before the interview.

By the way, the trains are running just fine between Crimea and Ukraine. They just tend to be 2 to 3 hours late because of the time required to clear Russian and Ukrainian passport control. They will totally search everything, so be prepared for that. My fiancee has travelled to Kiev 3 times this year by train since June.

Make sure your fiancee travels with her Ukrainian internal passport and keeps her Russian passport well hidden from the Ukrainian border guards, like inside her bra. It is illegal for Ukrainians to have dual citizenship, so having both passports could cause her big problems. But she will need her Russian passport at the Russian border crossing. The Russian border guards have no problem with her carrying both passports.

Russia is probably much easier than Crimea itself. The last time I sent money by MoneyGram to my fiancee (4/14/2014) who lives in Simferopol, it took her 7 hours to find a bank that still accepted MoneyGram. It was a Ukrainian bank and they told her April 15th was their last day in business there.

I sent an online inquiry on 4/15/2014 to MoneyGram about all their listed locations in Simferopol closing or already being closed. They have not responded, but now if you try to do a MoneyGram locations search on Simferopol or Sevastopol it says it is an unrecognized location. At least that's progress and they are indirectly admitting that they are no longer operating there.

I also sent an inquiry to Western Union the same day. But they have neither responded nor have they updated their list for Simferopol. It still shows some Ukrainian banks there that are now permanently closed. But there are a couple of Russian-based banks listed which are probably still open and might still be operating with Western Union.

The big question is if those Russian banks are open, do you specify the receiving country as Ukraine or Russia?

That size is called A4 which is 210 x 297 mm (8.267 x 11.692 inches). It is used almost everywhere in the world except the US and Canada instead of the American letter size 8.5 x 11.0 inches.

I keep a detailed log of all phone calls (duration and cost) and Skype video chats in an Excel Spreadsheet. I started doing it from day 1, which was March 30th last year.

I use a prepaid phone card, but unfortunately the company does not provide a way to print the log of phone calls. But the card is exclusively for Ukraine where my fiancee lives, so I print the receipts every time I recharge the card.

I also have an Android app for my phone that backs up all my SMS messages to my gmail account and I have a different app that downloads that information from gmail to my computer. I then wrote a program to gather all that hard data containing the SMS messages into a readable format.

I have also written my own program to extract a complete Skype log and even my Skype text messages from the Skype database stored on my computer.

I also print any receipts for flowers I send her.

I don't think the format matters as long as you keep meticulous records and present a huge pile of proof for the embassy interview. I easily have a stack of paper about 4 inches thick with all the proof.

Now if I could just get my fiancee out of the Crimea for her interview in Kiev we would be all set! We have all the documentation finished and they are just waiting on us to schedule it, but right now it's impossible to get out of the Crimea. The only flights operating are between Simferopol and Moscow. And it is difficult to send the money to her for the visas since many of the banks are now closed and those that are open and that worked for MoneyGram until recently no longer operate with MoneyGram. I'm not sure about Western Union, but it's probably the same story. I'm also not sure if the bank authorized to take visa payments is still open, but it probably won't be open next week since it is a Ukrainian bank that's a subsidiary of an Austrian Bank.

Hopefully things will settle down after the Crimean vote this Sunday.

Thanks for replying. The trains have not been running out of Crimea for at least a couple of days.

UIA was flying from Kiev to Simferopol until yesterday. But as of today all flights are cancelled through March 17th. It is posted on their web site. They think they will be able to resume on March 18th, but who knows if that will happen!

Turkish Airlines operates 2 flights daily between Simferopol and Istanbul, but the flights for this evening and tomorrow morning have been cancelled. They only say to check online for later flights before heading to the airport.

Even if flights are restored next week, the way the US Embassy in Kiev works right now is that they keep your international passport and send it to your home by courier. I do not think my fiancee will be able to return to Simferopol without her international passport since Crimea will probably consider Ukraine a foreign country starting next week. Maybe the embassy will make an exception and let her pick up her passport there. Have you ever heard of them doing that?

In mid-February my fiancee received her packet from the US Embassy in Kiev. Unfortunately a couple of days later everything fell apart in Ukraine. My fiancee lives in Simferopol, the capital of Crimea, which is now occupied by Russian troops.

She was in the process of renewing her domestic passport at the time so she could travel to Kiev. The police called her after that and told her to come in and pick up her old passport and photos because they could no longer renew a domestic Ukrainian passport. She already had an appointment for March 16 to pick up her police certificate for her K-1 visa, so we will see then if that is even possible.

Even if we get the police certificate, getting her to Kiev may be a problem. So we are stuck in limbo until the political situation is straightened out. In the meantime, our K-1 approval from USCIS technically expires on April 11th. I am fairly certain I will need to call the embassy before the end of March to see if we can get an extension.

Has any heard of anyone else in a similar situation and whether they have figured out a game plan for the current mess?

My fiancee is an ethnic Russian and worries about her safety even if she can manage to get out of the Crimea and go to Kiev. I was planning to take her to Kiev before all this happened, but now as an American it isn't safe for me to go to Crimea.

To stay in this country legally past the 90-day expiration of the K-1 visa, she must apply for AOS. It most certainly is required. Failure to do so will eventually get her deported.

I think I would wait at least 6 months after the divorce before filing for a K-1 visa. That way it looks like you got divorced, then started to get close with your ex-wife's sister.

With the exception of the whole in-law thing, I went through something like that last year. I brought my Russian fiancee here in 2008 on a K-1 visa and we were married just over 4 years when I found out she was having an affair. She had become a US citizenship a few months before that. 10 days after my divorce was final last March, I met another Russian woman online (this time from the Ukraine) and we started to grow very close. An immigration attorney told me I might be called in for questioning during the early stage of the application if I applied for a new K-1 visa too soon.

But it took awhile before my new love agreed to marry me. By the time we applied for the K-1 visa, it had been 8 months since my divorce. The USCIS California Service Center approved it in 3 weeks. We are now waiting for the NVC to send the file to Kiev.

So I recommend waiting at least 6 months. Build up lots of evidence of your relationship in the meantime and don't submit any evidence from before your divorce. In fact wait a couple of months before you start gathering evidence of the relationship and go there to see her. The longer you wait, the better.

Make sure you apply for her travel document at the same time as AOS, just in case she needs to leave the country for any reason. It won't cost any more as long as you do it with the AOS. It only takes about 6 weeks to 2 months and she will have it long before any possible interview for AOS.

Also be sure she keeps the letter from the USCIS saying she has applied for AOS. It can be used as proof she is here legally after her K1 visa expires, and also to immediately apply for a social security number which you will need to file your taxes for 2013 (assuming you married in 2013).

You will have to file your taxes at a special address with a letter asking to treat your non-resident alien spouse as a US Resident Alien for 2013 and declare any income she earned in the Ukraine during 2013. But it's worth it to get joint filing status!

You're not the only ones getting fast approval. I just got an email this evening saying our I-129F application (fiancee visa) was approved. It's only been 21 days since the USCIS received our application. This seems impossible, but if it's true I am totally thrilled! Hopefully I will receive the official notice in the mail in the next couple of days.