mendeleev

Over the years, I've used several services. Most frequently, I use GotoRussia whose offices are in Atlanta. They've done well for us with many different visa types. (Private stay, tourist, business, common humanitarian). I've also used Russia-visacentre.com and their service was also good. Truth be told, I haven't had a bad experience these 20+ years though.

We fly to Siberia through Dubai. Our friends who have used Istanbul have experienced frequent, unacceptable changes in connection times that have interfered with originating flights in the interior of the USA needed to get to a Turkish Air US-based departure airport. Similarly, onward connections there have reported been sometimes unreliable. Dubai is more expensive. The international terminal is amazing. The terminal we use to fly to Russia less so. For us, layovers have gotten longer this year because number of flights into Russia have decreased. We fly in June/July/September and I can mention experience later.

Expobank, one of the banks we have used for Wire transfers, is now sanctioned by the USA and off-limits.

Wire transfers can work. Raiffeisenbank's parent bank in Austria has been under pressure by the US government and, as a consequence, now charges a prohibitive 50% commission for dollar transfers. So our son opened a euro account at Raiffeisenbank and we now transfer euros. Our brokerage firm (can I admit it is Schwab without violating TOS?) does the currency conversion for us. There are extra steps. Expobank is a Russian regional bank that allows dollar wire transfers. We also have an account there and transfers dollars to it. Fees on the Russian side at both banks are minimal. (They are lower than ATM fees charged by US banks to let us take rubles from Russian ATMs were in the "good old days". Schwab has a $15 wire transfer fee. ) These banks are under continual formal and informal pressure from western governments to stop providing service to customers and the situation changes from time to time. Now, many US banks refuse to send wires to Russia. I have heard (don't know if it is really true it since I don't have accounts there) that Bank of America and Wells Fargo refuse to wire customer funds to Russia. Fidelity wouldn't tell me if they would or if they wouldn't. I don't need Fidelity to do this right now, so didn't push the issue. Like I wrote, things change.

geekitana is right — last time i was there at least. It’s Russia, things change but fortunately don’t change

In March and April 2022, USPS, UPS, FEDEX, and DHL all stopped sending anything from the USA to Russia. This has nothing to do with the formal sanctions regime. We still have not found means of sending anything to Russia except asking relatives in Europe to intermediate or carrying it ourselves in luggage when we go there. The situation is analogous to VISA and Mastercard shutting down ATM access in Russia to US banks at about the same time, absent anything by governments compelling action at that time. There are still a couple large and many medium-sized banks in Russia that are not blocked by OFAC and remain able to receive US-originated wire transfers intermediated by SWIFT. This aspect of the situation is fluid and changes from time to time. These are elements of the economic blockade that catch folks like us in the middle. It is possible for Russians to send mail to us in the USA and they do get delivered.