BenNomad

My wife and I always use aviasales (dot) ru to check for the cheapest flights to/from Russia. You don't need a VPN to use that site. But we usually buy the tickets directly from the airline and then you do need to use a Russian VPN. There are free Russian VPN apps for Android devices (I had a harder time finding a plugin for a PC web browser but I'm sure they exist). The bigger problem is paying for the tickets. We would buy the tickets between Istanbul and the rest of the world with a U.S. bank card, but the Istanbul-Russia tickets have to be purchased with a Russian bank card if you're flying on a Russian airline (maybe it's more accurate to say that U.S. bank cards don't work). The work-around would be buying a ticket with a non-Russian airline that flies to Russia (like Armenia's FlyOne or FlyDubai). We flew out of Russia once via Yerevan and I used my U.S. bank card to buy that ticket, but the connection times and prices may not be the best in many cases.

It does seem like it's getting trickier to get to Poland, even more than before, and also more difficult in general to get a Schengen visa (to any country). Did your friends try entering Poland by car, train or air from the Czech Republic? I totally understand the risk of making all those arrangements, paying for tickets and hotels in advance - only to be denied at the border. It has been discussed over and over what to do in this situation, and I wonder what happened to some of the people who came on here looking for help but never came back to say whether they found a way out or not. I never contacted my Congressional rep for intervention in my wife's case, but sometimes that is the way out, if you have a good rep I guess. It has also been suggested to write a joint letter to the Bureau of Consular Affairs, but in the end there has to be an embassy with the ability to take on cases. There have been isolated cases of embassies taking transfers without requiring residency, but they seem few and far between and not any one in particular stands out as consistently taking transfers - except for Jerusalem, which is not taking new transfers apparently. Jerusalem accepted our transfer on the basis of having a Schengen that we couldn't really use to get to Poland (Greece's explicit conditions). I also explained that our case was simple document-wise (U.S. citizen kids, no previous marriages, no criminal record, etc).

Hi, the email from the Polish Consulate won't do anything for you unfortunately. The State Dept is well aware of the situation, but hasn't provided a solution for IR/CR-1 applicants. If your husband is in Russia, try to get a Schengen visa. Hungary may be one of the better options to try for. Almaty stopped taking transfers a long time ago (except for IR-5). We successfully transferred to Bishkek but I suspect that was because our case was in Jerusalem when the embassy suspended operations there. Jerusalem is processing cases again but I don't know if they are taking transfers. They were the only embassy that was consistently taking transfers prior to the war. If an embassy accepts a transfer it happens quickly, like a few days or less. The IR/CR-1 cases are electronic so there's no physical mailing. If your husband is not in Russia, he'll have to return there to apply for a Schengen visa if he doesn't have residence anywhere else.

My wife had her interview on Friday in Bishkek and was approved. They told her right away the day and time to come pick up the passport, which was a nice surprise and allowed us to buy tickets to the U.S. already, in time for New Years. Yay! Unfortunately, I don't think Bishkek is accepting transfers anymore, at least from what my wife is reading.

Congratulations! 🤩

If you select the reschedule option, does it let you continue to choose a new date? If so, then I would go for it despite their rule. But I wasn't in that situation so I can't confirm that there will be no issues. But what could they possibly do?

If it allows you to schedule a second, later interview date, go for it. Then just let them know you won't be attending the earlier interview. At one point my wife had two interviews dates scheduled in Warsaw (one scheduled by us and the other by the consulate) and I had to contact US travel docs twice to get them sort it out.

It is illogical but that's Warsaw. I also contacted them to cancel our interview date and they just sent me a standard reply about waiting until after the interview date.

Do you know cases where people have been given EU humanitarian visas (Schengen LTV visa?) for the purpose of attending a U.S. immigration interview?

Oh, ok. Thanks. I was looking only at P2P. I thought P2P was the only way to withdraw to a Russian bank account. I sent a small amount of USDC to a new account I opened on ByBIt and it just vanished! It was sent succesfully but it never arrived.

The only exchange operating in Russia that supports USDC for P2P transactions seems to be ByBit. Am I missing something? I registered on HTX (Huobi) - no USDC listed for P2P. Same thing with CommEx. I couldn't find USDC on Garantex either. USDT seems to be widely supported though. Also, the only mutually available network for transferring USDC to ByBit or HTX is Ethereum. Solana network is not available. As far as I could tell, there is no zero-fee transfer option for USDC, but the fee using the Ethereum network at the time I checked was around $5. And that's a flat fee, not a percent of the transfer amount.

If ustraveldocs is showing you Russian addresses for delivery/pickup, you need to contact support and they'll update your country to Poland.

It's not possible. We tried. You have to apply in your home country or where you have permanent residence. Bishkek - they might still be accepting transfers. Response time in our case was about one week (after an initial automatic response) Jerusalem - are they taking new cases? The most logical places to try are where Russian language is spoken. We got declined by Dushanbe (Tajikistan) however. Another one you might try is Ashgabat (Turkmenistan) because probably nobody tries to transfer there. You need a visa to enter Turkmenistan though, even as a Russian citizen. How about Baku? Did you contact them?

I was looking at the same page and I added up all the visa categories including Diversity Visas (DV).

I wrote to BishkekIV@state.gov with the transfer request (stated reason being the Jerusalem situation) and got an automatic reply which sounded like a denial. Then I got another email a week later accepting the transfer. My wife has been following a Telegram chat group for Bishkek, which I think is mostly people who wanted to transfer out of Jerusalem, and recently people are saying that Bishkek is not accepting transfers. I'm sure they got overwhelmed with requests. Looking at embassy stats, they generally issue more visas than Jerusalem.