Russia closes the US Consulate General in St. Petersburg: where to get a visa now

Russia, in response to US actions in the “Skripal case,” is revoking its consent to the work of the Consulate General in St. Petersburg and expelling 60 American diplomats, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

Фото: Depositphotos

“Literally at these moments, US Ambassador Huntsman has been invited to our ministry, where my deputy Sergei Ryabkov outlines to him the content of the measures against the United States, they include the expulsion of a similar number of diplomats and they include our decision to withdraw consent to the functioning of the US Consulate General in St. Petersburg,” - quotes the diplomat RIA News.

“So, in order to achieve a normal conversation, in order to establish the truth, we officially proposed convening... an extraordinary session of the OPCW executive council on April 2,” the foreign minister emphasized.

The Foreign Ministry confirmed the information about the expulsion of diplomats, among them 58 embassy staff in Moscow and two consulate workers in Yekaterinburg. They are required to leave Russia before 5 April.

How and where to get a US visa now

Sign up for filing documents for a US visa can be in other cities - Moscow, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok.

You can also apply for a visa at US consulates and offices around the world. Enough when filling DS-160 Forms specify the country in which you plan to submit documents. On the travel.state.gov website, you can check the time frame for making a visa in the United States in a particular city. Russians recently began to travel for a visa to the former Soviet republics, where interviews are conducted in Russian, and EU countries, where queues are smaller (most residents of these countries do not need to issue a tourist visa in the US).

The best options for Russians at the cost of flight and accommodation: Riga, Warsaw and Tbilisi.

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Recall that 26 March has learned that the US authorities have decided send Russian diplomats from 60and also to close the Russian consulate in Seattle. Such a decision on the consulate was made due to its territorial proximity to the military base of submarines, the plant of the corporation Boeing in Seattle, Wash., and in response to Russia's use of military-type chemical weapons in Britain.

The former GRU officer Sergey Skripal and his daughter Julia were found unconscious on a bench in Salisbury March 4. They were taken to the hospital in critical condition, they are still in a coma, doctors estimate their condition as consistently severe. The police found that they were poisoned by a nerve agent. About 20 people were poisoned, including the policeman who first visited the scene and the house of Skripal. On the fact of poisoning a case of attempted murder.

In Russia, Skripal in 2006 year was convicted of espionage in favor of British intelligence MI6. In 2010, he was exchanged for Russian intelligence agents uncovered in the United States.

Mutual expulsion from the countries of American and Russian diplomats began on December 29 2016 of the year, when 44 of US President Barack Obama signed a decree obliging Russian diplomats 35 to leave America. This document also closed their colleagues with access to two real estate properties in the states of New York and Maryland, which, according to American intelligence, were used by Russians for espionage.

In response, Russia banned the US Embassy from using a summer cottage in Serebryany Bor and storage facilities on Dorozhnaya Street in the south of Moscow. Russian authorities also expressed the need reducing the American embassy to xnumx people, to equalize their number with the number of employees in the Russian diplomatic mission in the United States.

In response to this, the US Embassy in Russia suspended the issuance of non-immigrant visas August 23 to September 1 2017. The issuance of renewed 1 September, but only in Moscow (before a visa could also be obtained in the consulate general in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Vladivostok).

In addition, in response The United States decided to close the Russian Consulate General in San Francisco and some sales offices in Washington and New York.

Read also on ForumDaily:

US Ambassador to Russia: After the expulsion of diplomats in America, there will be fewer Russian spies

Poisoning Russian intelligence officer in Britain and Russian spies in the United States

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