Number of Russian visas issued to Americans rises
More Russian visas have been issued to US citizens this year than in 2023, Aleksey Klimov, the director of the Foreign Ministry’s consular department, has said. Hundreds of thousands of electronic visas have been granted to Chinese, Indian, Turkish and German nationals this year, the diplomat has revealed.
According to the Klimov, the procedure for obtaining a Russian visa has not changed for US citizens since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Restrictions only apply to a select list of individuals who have been barred from entering Russia, he added.
In an interview to RIA Novosti released on Thursday, Klimov said that “in the first 11 months of 2024, a total of 7,737 visas (165 of which were business visas) were issued to US citizens by Russian diplomatic representation offices and consulates.” The official noted that the number was 5,694 for the entirety of last year.
He also pointed out that Moscow did not respond in kind to the European Union scrapping the visa facilitation agreement in 2022 and that it still partly honors it.
Brussels suspended the 2007 EU-Russia visa facilitation accord in September 2022, citing Moscow’s military campaign against Kiev. The move made the visa application process for Russian citizens lengthier, costlier, and subject to greater scrutiny.
Moreover, a number of EU states, such as the Netherlands, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, separately imposed an entry ban for all Russian holders of short-stay Schengen visas.
Commenting on calls made by senior EU officials of late over the need to tighten the visa issuance procedure for Russians, Klimov told the media outlet that Moscow would carefully calibrate its response to any potential further restrictions by Brussels. He emphasized that Russia seeks to avoid harming “ordinary European citizens, many of whom do not support the anti-Russian course pursued by their governments.”
The Russian diplomat also revealed that since the start of this year, more than 600,000 electronic visas have been granted, most of which have been given to individuals from China, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Türkiye, India, and Estonia.
Last month, the Russian business daily RBK, citing data from Russia’s Federal Security Service, reported that the country had welcomed seven times as many Chinese visitors from January to September 2024 compared to the same period of last year. According to the media outlet, a million trips to Russia were made by foreign citizens during that period – up 11% over 2023. Of those, 731,800 were undertaken by Chinese nationals.
