ninjakid

Turns out I was able to get money to my wife through a friend who works for a Russian guy. He asked his boss to pay his salary this month to my wife's RF account, and I am paying my friend.

Hi, I've been using cryptocurrency to send money to my wife in Russian for over a year now.  Basically, you deposit USD to your crypto account and convert it to one of the cryptocurrencies. Then, send it to her crypto account and she can withdraw money in Rubles.   If you are not sure how to do that, I can help you. If you do not want to deal with cryptocurrency by yourself, people from Let's Russia (https://buy.letsrussia.com/) can help you with transferring money to your wife for you by basically doing the same things I just explained. But you don't have to have an account or anything. 
 

I was able to send a wire transfer from Chase to Avangard Bank yesterday and the day before. So far it's working. 🤞
Wire transfers are expensive (~$50 per transfer), but it's free for Sapphire Checking although it has $25 monthly fee. Still the best offer I could find.

That number works and the agents are extremely helpful; there can certainly be a wait (I once was on hold for over an hour), but when you get through they're really kind and efficient. I don't think emailing will yield a response, though. The phone lines are filled with many people asking urgent questions so I don't think there's a dedicated team responding to emails, better to just get up super early and call (if you're in the US). 

THANK YOU!!!! I've been waiting for someone to come here with this news, haha.
 
$50 for a wire transfer is standard, it's not really that bad of a fee when you consider the amazing convenience that the service is. I'm really glad to hear that Chase is OK with doing business with Russia, prior I heard negative things that they were suspicious about money transfers to/from Russia. Great to know if that has changed!

Thanks! That's great to know. It could be another option for me. I will find out
 
No problem. So far all the money transfers to Tinkoff accounts went through as long as a money transfer company still operates in Russia. 

I've done wire transfers via CapitalOne between Russia and the US before and I did it 100% online. This was prior to the war/new sanctions though. Curious if it still might be an option. I think you could just go in person to a BoA and see what they say.
 
Really good to know about Tinkoff. Thanks for the info!

Yeah I have more luck on Tinkoff bank than Sberbank. Right before WU announced it would suspend operation in Russia, only 1 out of 3 attempt went through Sberbank account using WU. Then I switched to send to Tinkoff bank instead after that. It's very possible that US banks refusing to send money or it could be something to do with Sberbank itself that they might suspend service temporally to avoid people from withdrawing too much money from their account.   
 
No, I have not asked my bank about Sberbank yet. But if I couldn't use WU today, I was going to in addition to a question about directly wire transfer from my bank (bank of america) to Russia. They took Russia out of recipient's country from the list recently from their website. I was wondering if I can do the wire transfer in person at BoA's branch office. 

Crypto? Try sending money in something other than USD? I don't know what the answer is yet. I keep hearing "not every bank is sanctioned, some still accept SWIFT" but I don't know what those banks are. I've hear Sberbank is not sanctioned but then others say it is. Very difficult to get info.
 
There's also this dubious new EO that Biden put out, while it doesn't specific bank transfers it says that "banknotes" cannot be sent to anyone in the RF. I don't know if companies/apps/banks here Stateside are refusing to send anything to Russia because of this or what.
 
 

I was looking into Crypto yesterday and today. But I stumbled across Western Union's blog today.
https://www.westernunion.com/blog/en/russia-and-belarus/
I couldn't send the money to Russia when I tried WU many times a few days ago and it told me they cannot complete the transfer. That's when I also saw the news article that WU suspended the money transfer to Russia. So I gave up WU at the time. but I saw the blog post this afternoon and immediately contacted WU and they confirmed they are still operating. I don't know what happened a few days ago but I tried to send money later today and it went through fortunately!
 
For Russian bank, Sberbank and Tinkoff bank have not been sanctioned yet as far as I know. 
 
I can never take a break...Biden is trying to slowly kill my family... 

Just throwing this out there:  legitimate reasons include child support, loan payments, payments to support owned property, etc.

Hello! Thought I would share my experience as well with the Schengen visa. My husband never had one before and he has only been to two other countries. We had an appointment Nov 11th at the Greek visa center in Moscow and as of Nov 17th he got his visa valid for multiple entry until the end of February 2022. I didn't purchase any flights or hotels but I did buy a dummy ticket which was about 70 dllrs to make it look like we were flying together and staying at a hotel in Athens for two weeks. These are valid reservations that can be checked online and are valid for visa purposes. I also provided an affidavit of support that i would be paying for our stay in Greece and sent my bank statement along with an employment/wage verification from work. The lady at the visa center reviewed everything and she mentioned there was a likelihood of getting the visa very quickly and she was correct 🙂
 
As for the medical my husband was able to schedule it before we had our interview day set in Moscow . They where very helpful and said they would work with us once we get the date. Once we received our interview he called them back and they were able to schedule him for Nov 25th

Thank you very much for sharing the detailed information and I'm very happy for you and your husband finally getting his visa 😆

Thank you very much for sharing the detailed information and I'm very happy for you and your husband finally getting his visa 😆

Thank you very much for sharing the detailed information and I'm very happy for you and your husband finally getting his visa 😆

Hello everyone! My husband finally got his visa! I know many of you are going through similar situations and I appreciate everyone who posts here with helpful information. I hope to also help anyone with questions like ours so here is a detailed description of how things went for us. 
 
We requested to transfer our case from Moscow to Warsaw august 21 2021 and they accepted our transfer august 23. On august 27 we got our Warsaw case number from NVC. 
We started preparing by gathering information on how to get to Poland. We knew that Russians cannot easily get to Poland because of covid and my husband didn’t have a schengen visa. So we decided that buying a tour to another schengen country and going to Poland through that country would be the best option. I knew that this is how many people did it by going to Greece first. 
October 15th we got an email saying that my husbands interview is scheduled for November 2nd. We had to hurry because that meant we had less than three weeks to get his medical exam done, apply for and receive his schengen visa, fly to somewhere in Europe and then to Poland. 
The same day we bought a tour to Hungary because it’s cheaper than Greece and closer to Poland. We also scheduled his medical exam for October 25th in Moscow (yes, you can do the medical exam in Moscow). We decided to go to Hungary because it is cheaper and closer to Poland. My husband applied for a schengen in Krasnodar on the 19th because that is the closest Hungarian visa center to where he lives. We requested that we pick up the visa by ourselves in Moscow since we would be there for the medical exam anyway. He was able to do the medical exam with his internal passport because his travel passport wasn’t ready with the schengen visa yet. Then we flew to Moscow, did the medical exam and picked up the schengen visa all on the 25th. We were very surprised and blessed to receive the schengen so quickly. Also Moscow sends the results of the medical exam automatically (we did have an issue with this later but I’ll explain when I get to that) to Poland and we didn’t have to come back to get the results. We did call and email them to make sure his results were sent to Poland. Also at the IOM they only used my husbands old Moscow case number even though we had a new Warsaw number. We were asked to write both numbers on all the forms. They told us not to worry and that it was only for the IOM and they know he has a new number. 
On October 31st we flew to Hungary.
November 1st we flew to Poland. 
November 2nd was the interview. My husband was asked about where he works, where I work, how we met and how he proposed. He was told that his visa is approved but they didn’t receive the results of the medical exam so he could r receive his visa yet. They said it wouldn’t take long to receive it and it will be okay. We were still worried because his schengen was opened for only 6 days. 
We walked out of the embassy and tried calling the IOM to make sure they’d sent the medical results. However, since Moscow is on lockdown since October 28th, they didn’t answer so we emailed them. They quickly responded saying they resent the results. We also got an email saying that the Warsaw embassy requested the results as well and they sent them to the embassy. It was all okay and we came back November 3rd (the next day) and picked up his passport with his visa! All is good and we flew back to Hungary because the tickets from there to Moscow were already payed for because of the tour. But I’m pretty sure you could get back to russia from Poland without any issues as well. Now we are on our way home. 
I hope that all made sense, and I’d be happy to answer any questions that I can. 

After I kept trying to contact the US embassy in Warsaw for the last two weeks to transfer our case there, I heard nothing from them. I decided to call them this morning and went to the website and I saw this: https://pl.usembassy.gov/visas/immigrant-visas/. Now, they officially announces they are accepting IV applicants from Russia. 

 

After I kept trying to contact the US embassy in Warsaw for the last two weeks to transfer our case there, I heard nothing from them. I decided to call them this morning and went to the website and I saw this: https://pl.usembassy.gov/visas/immigrant-visas/. Now, they officially announces they are accepting IV applicants from Russia. 

 

After I kept trying to contact the US embassy in Warsaw for the last two weeks to transfer our case there, I heard nothing from them. I decided to call them this morning and went to the website and I saw this: https://pl.usembassy.gov/visas/immigrant-visas/. Now, they officially announces they are accepting IV applicants from Russia. 

 

After I kept trying to contact the US embassy in Warsaw for the last two weeks to transfer our case there, I heard nothing from them. I decided to call them this morning and went to the website and I saw this: https://pl.usembassy.gov/visas/immigrant-visas/. Now, they officially announces they are accepting IV applicants from Russia. 

 

On the DoS site Russians are categorized now as a Homeless Nationality and Warsaw is mentioned as a selected post for IV. I didn’t find any information about automatic transferring of cases on any embassy site though.

I stumbled across @Amerussian and it looks like they successfully transferred their case to Kazakhstan after asking multiple times:
 

I contacted the embassy in Poland today to request a case transfer. I have been trying to contacting the US embassies in Armenia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine but have never got any responses from Armenia and Kazakhstan. I got a response from Ukraine today refusing my request and recommended that I contact the embassy in Warsaw, Poland to see if they can accept my cases. That made me think Poland is the only option now and other embassies even know it.  
I also tried to contact Georgia and Moldova but I saw their website already says they do not accept transfer from another country. I was going to contact Belarus but I realized that all the interviews for Belarusian is conducted in Poland.  

I have good news for those who don’t have a schengen visa and plan on doing the medical exam in Moscow. Well my husband and I were worried we wouldn’t have enough time to do the medical exam and get the schengen in time for the interview since they notified us 18 days in advance. However when we called the IOM they told us that my husband can do his medical exam with his internal passport with no problems. So now we don’t have to stress as much about it. 

We simply bought a tour for 6 nights to Hungary so yes we said we were sightseeing as tourists. When filing for the schengen visa there isn’t a full on interview most of the time because the visa center just accepts your documents and sends them to the embassy that then decides to approve or not.