Refusal to issue a Russian Visa in the 2020

I’ve prepared the instruction, which will help you to avoid a refusal to issue a visa to Russia.

Step-by-step guide to get a visa to Russia

• Incomplete pack of documents
• Mistake in the application form
• Prohibition on entry the Russian Federation

If you submitted an incomplete pack of documents during your application for a Russian visa, you will be most likely refused to get a visa. In order to avoid it, you need to check a list of documents required to issue a Russian visa before you will apply for it. This list may be found on a website of certain Russian Consulate, in which you are going to apply and also you can clarify information by the phone. Moreover you need to keep in mind that list of documents may differ depending on your citizenship and visa type.

Regardless of the visa type, determined by a purpose of visit to Russia, each foreign citizen must submit:

• passport (which must contain at least 2 empty pages for visas and which validity period must be at least 6 months after visa date of expiration);
• invitation to Russia (which must be issued by an inviting party in Russia);
• completed visa application form.

In addition to the documents above, any foreign citizen, who wants to get a visa to Russia may need the following:

• medical certificate of absence of the HIV;
• medical insurance policy valid for the whole period of stay in Russia;
• airline tickets to enter and leave Russia;
• confirmation of booking a room in a hotel for a period of stay in Russia;
• bank statement;
• guarantee letter from an organization, which has invited you to Russia.

If you, while filling in an application form, provided information which differs from the information specified in the invitation, you will be denied to get a visa to Russia. That’s why you need to be attentive during completing of the application form.

The most common discrepancies are:

• visit purpose (you need to specify exactly the same purpose which is in your invitation: even if you apply for a visa to visit your friend or relatives living in Russia, you need to indicate your visit purpose as “tourism” if you apply for a tourist visa and “business” if you are going to obtain a business visa);
• name of an inviting organization (most people mistakenly indicate an organization related to their trip to Russia as an inviting organization but not the one which has issued the invitation);
• place of residence in Russia (you need to copy this information from your invitation: it will be a name of hotel for a tourist visa, its address and room number, for a business visa it will be a list of cities, which you are going to visit).

If you for some reason are not allowed to enter Russia, you will not get a visa until such a ban will be lifted. Usually the following leads to the ban to entry Russia:

• Unpaid fines;
• Violations of the rules of stay of the foreign citizens in Russia in the previous visits;
• Deportation from Russia.

You may find out that you have a ban to enter Russia at the moment of issuing an invitation because during invitation processing of some invitation types (business and private) your personal data is checked by FMS officers. If they find you name in the list of those who are banned to enter Russia, an inviting party gets a refusal to issue an invitation with the reason. In some cases (issue of tourist visa) you may find out that you have a prohibition on enter the Russian Federation only after submission of the visa documents. It happens because tourist organizations which issue invitations don’t check any of your personal data, meanwhile such check is mandatory in Russian Consulates or Embassies.

I have prepared the instruction for you to avoid problems

Step-by-step guide to get a Russian Visa

If you have questions ask them in comments. I will try to answer them all.

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