In Russia, an interview to get a US visa must wait almost a year

The growth of queues for a visa in the United States for the Russians in Moscow called the "political moment".

Фото: Depositphotos

The queue for an interview for obtaining a US visa in Moscow and Yekaterinburg is rapidly approaching a year. The US Embassy claims that what is happening is connected solely with a reduction in the ability to provide consular services. However, the ex-Russian ambassador to the US, Sergei Kislyak, in an interview with "News”Such a dramatic increase in the waiting period called the“ political moment ”. According to him, Russian diplomats in the United States manage to cope with the visa requests of Americans, having the same number of dippers.

According to official data State Department Consular Services Bureau, Russians applying for an ordinary American visa in Moscow will have to wait for an invitation to interview for at least 250 days.

Photo: travel.state.gov

Exactly the same situation exists today in Yekaterinburg. The opportunity to get an interview after three months has been preserved only in Vladivostok. At the same time, Russians who applied for a visa recently say that the queue in the capital has already exceeded 250 days and continues to grow.

The long waiting period for the interview is due to the political background, former Russian Ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak, the first deputy chairman of the committee of the Federation Council on international affairs, told Izvestia.

“Queues for visas are a political issue. This is a desire to pretend that the current difficulties in Russian-American relations allegedly complicate the work of the US diplomatic mission. I just can’t agree with this way of putting the question, because the Americans have the same apparatus as we have in the States,” said the ex-diplomat. —If diplomatic forces were distributed correctly and were interested in developing contacts between people, the Americans would find a way to organize the work properly. They are very pragmatic people and know how to organize work correctly.”

However, the American side argues that the problems associated with visa services have only technical reasons. The US embassy in Moscow explained: the growth of the queue is explained by the shortage of staff, and it is not yet possible to reorganize this work.

“US law requires US consular officers to conduct interviews in most visa applications. The reduction in personnel at the US diplomatic mission in the Russian Federation at the request of the Russian Federation and the closure of the US Consulate General in St. Petersburg have radically reduced our ability to provide visa services,” Andrea Kalan, the new press secretary of the US Embassy in the Russian Federation, told Izvestia.

Recall, 26 March, it became known that the US government made a decision 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, when 44 th President of the USA 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).

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