millefleur

**One post quoting derailing content removed. Please stay on topic or further admin action will be taken.** VJ Moderation

That is intriguing. Back when the Moscow Embassy unctioned, spouses were allowed to attend. Good for others to know if they were counting on that. Quite strange. At the Moscow Embassy, our experience was there was only one official who interviewed my husband. I wonder if this 2 officers is the norm now or if for some reason they suspected something was off. I'm sorry to hear what you are going through. It sounds like just bumbling incompetence on their part when dealing with an applicant who needed to update paperwork. Always a good idea to be super prepared and even over prepared beforehand to avoid things like this from happening. I hope your case is updated soon and she gets the visa.

So EU countries are still shipping stuff to/from Russia but we aren't? Bizarre. Seeing as how we're thousands of miles away from the conflict and all.

It depends heavily on the Embassy who will process your DCF case. I have not seen anyone here going via Stockholm for DCF so it's hard to say, perhaps someone will chime in but it's not a common one here on VJ. If they told 6+ months then that is what it is. It is still faster than the lockbox filing, which takes up to 2 years as @Jorgedig mentioned.

I have not heard of any direct mail services to Russia from the US that have resumed yet. If someone else here knows, please share.

Great news! I'm glad VJ was able to help so much.

I used Russian Visa Centre in Washington, D.C. I had no issues obtaining a 3 year private visa. https://russia-visacentre.com/en/visa/usa/russia

There's no need to provide as much as you did during ROC. You can also go back and upload things later as needed, that's what I did.

I just saw that Bratislava has a wait time of 16 calendar days according to the official site, which seems promising indeed: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information-resources/wait-times.html Bratislava is a super easy to get to from Vienna, Austria. It's only about an hour away. So one could easily travel there from Vienna for the interview. Just an idea as I assume it might be easier to fly to Vienna (bigger city) than to Bratislava. This is potentially a much nicer side vacation than going to Poland. Another promising bit of info, the Slovakia ustraveldocs actually confirms that they are accepting nonresidents for visa applications, which is great: https://www.ustraveldocs.com/sk/index.html?firstTime=No For me, this is a perfect solution and I will be looking into travel agencies to see if we can get my MIL and SIL appointments in Bratislava.

That is really useful info! I will look into this. Could you send me the name of the travel agency?

Unfortunately the situation right now is complicated due to sanctions. There's a possibility of just traveling to Russia and taking cash out of the country but obviously this is not ideal, you'd also need to declare it and back it up with documents showing it's not stolen. The problem right now is that US banks are not working with Russian banks due to sanctions. There might be an individual US bank who still is, you'd have to contact each bank individually and ask them. As far as I know, it is being blocked from the US side, not the Russian side. So, any Russian bank would cooperate, you just need to find a US bank that would be willing to accept the transfer.

Just thought I would update here if anyone was wondering about a similar situation for Russian citizens since the war started. My MIL had a B visa that was issued almost 3 years ago but never visited due to the pandemic. She finally was able to visit the US last month via Istanbul. At the border, she had absolutely no issues entering on her B visa despite the war/political situation. The border guard asked her only standard questions including "Where is your husband?" to which she replied that he was in Russia. She was admitted shortly after and given a 6 month stay. The border agent did not speak Russian and she was not offered an interpreter so she just responded in the very limited English she knows. Now her tourist visa expires this December so getting a new one will be a challenge. She contacted VFS Global and they are no longer doing renewals inside Russia, that stopped last year. So, most likely going to Warsaw or some other country is the only option. Just wanted to start this thread for others with Russian relatives and their tourist visa experiences.

@To_the_moon travelled to Russia recently if I'm not mistaken.

Poland will but there's a huge line as non-residents applying for tourist visas are placed last. I think I heard someone mention Hungary? I think you can apply at as many consulates/embassies as you like, but make sure they even take non-residents. Some do, some don't. The info is not always readily available. Best to try and contact each one and confirm before paying the fee.