The long and winding road that leads to a Russian visa

- Or, quoting Lenin: “What Is To Be Done?”

Dear outgoing placement officer!

Many people on this planet are confused and nervous about how to get a visa for Russia. May this guide alleviate your pains!

General rules

# 1. You, the sending organization, send to us (W4U) the following data:

• A copy of the data page of the passport (1) (2)
• Nationality
• Passport number, date of issuing, date of expiry
• Date of birth
• Place of work/study (name, address, tel., fax)
• Occupation
• Dates of stay in Russia (3)
• Cities in Russia planned to be visited
• Place of picking up the visa (country, city)(4)

Notes:

• (1) An emailed scan of the passport removes the risk of a distorted fax image. Otherwise just fax it.
• (2) If the passport’s validity period has been prolonged, please include the page with the stamp that confirms the prolongation.
• (3) Please note that the visa must be valid at least one day before the start date of the camp, as the volunteers arrive in Moscow one day before the camp starts.
• (4) This refers to the nearest embassy or consular section of Russia in your country. See the list of links to Russian embassies and consulates below.

# 2. The volunteer can get 3 types of invitation letters for visas. See the table below.

Notes:

• (1) The validity is 30 days, not 1 month. This means that we will not make an invitation in the period 15.07-15.08 but 15.07-14.08
• (2) A 3-month invitation costs 20 EUR more than a 30-day visa. This is a fee that the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is charging us.

• a) If the volunteer participates in 2 or more camps, World4U pays the invitation.
• b) If the volunteer participates in one camp, but wants a 3-month visa, the volunteer must pay the 20 EUR difference and confirm that he's ready to do so before arriving.

# 3. We can start making the invitation letter

• A.earliest 45 days before the date of arrival in Russia and
• B.latest (in non-emergencies) 14 days before the date of arrival to Russia.
• C.In emergencies, we can make and express deliver an invitation letter for a 21-day visa so that it reaches you in 4 days. This costs app. 25-33 EUR for European destinations, and we don’t do this before you have asked the volunteer whether he is willing to pay this. Then comes the process of getting the visa at the embassy, which gets more expensive the closer the volunteer gets to his departure.

#4. Hopefully, we receive ALL the data mentioned from you. We need all of it for the invitation, and if we don’t get all of it, we’ll email you to get it. This delays the process.

#5. We pass the info to our visa coordinator, who makes an official invitation letter. This takes 1 working day for the 21-day visa – and 8-10 working days for the 30-day and 3-month visas.

#6. We fax - or email a scanned copy of - the invitation letter to you, the sending organization. IF a) the volunteer will pick up the visa in Canada, Denmark, Finland, Switzerland or Paris, AND b) it’s a 30-day or 3-month visa, you can now give the fax/scan to the volunteer and he can go and apply for a visa at his local Russian embassy or consulate. See the attached list of websites to find the nearest Russian Embassy or consulate. This application procedure takes from 1 day to 3 weeks, depending on how much the volunteer is willing to pay for the speed!

#7. We air mail the original invitation letter to you, the sending organization. It usually takes app. 2 weeks for the letter to arrive.

#8. If you need the original invitation faster (in emergencies), we can use an express delivery service. This costs app. 25-33 EUR for European destinations, and we don’t do this before you have asked the volunteer whether he is willing to pay this.

#9. When this letter arrives to your office, you can now in any case give the original invitation letter to the volunteer and he can go and apply for a visa at his local Russian embassy or consulate. See below for the list of websites to find the nearest Russian Embassy or consulate. This application procedure takes from 1 day to 3 weeks, depending on how much the volunteer is willing to pay for the speed!

#10. Please note that the embassy/consulate will be keeping the volunteer’s passport during the period it takes for them to issue the visa. So the volunteer can’t travel in that period (unless he has an extra passport!)

#11. Your volunteer

• D.gets the visa,
• E.follows the instructions on the infosheet (including emailing us his flight number plus time and date of arrival and departure - plus in camps with kids getting general health and HIV certificates etc.),
• F.goes to Russia,
• G.and everyone is happy! (And we are grateful to you for bearing with all this!)

Special rules

A. Volunteers from the following countries don’t need a visa, but only a faxed standard invitation letter from World4U:
Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Republic of Moldova, Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine.
Please note that citizens of Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia do need an official invitation.

B. We are not eligible to make invitations for volunteers from Africa, Mexico and the Middle East, including Turkey and Palestine. Only major educational institutions are eligible to make invitations from these countries. We are extremely sorry about this! (We are working on a visa abolition lobby campaign; your experiences in this field are welcomed!)

C. Instead of using World4U, the volunteer can get a travel agency in his country to make the invitation letter for him. Sometimes that’s easier (the Americans do it a lot) - and for the volunteers mentioned in special rule B, it’s the only way to do it.

PS. This is all based on our experience at the moment of writing. The rules of the Russian bureaucracy could happen to change later...