How to get Visa to russia from UK in 2020

Tourist invitation is issued quickly enough: in just 5 minutes. The right to issue this document have tour operators registered in the Unified Federal Register of tour operators. Invitations are printed on the forms of the tour operators, so they look different from company to company. At the same time, the invitation always consists of two parts:

1. Tourist voucher indicating that you have bought a tourist ticket to Russia.
2. Confirmation of tourist admission — the Consulate is requested to issue a visa to a foreign citizen.

The documents contain the same information: the tour operator (name, address, reference number), info about invited foreigner, the route of his journey and the dates of entry and exit.

An invitation letter from the organization is a petition to the Consulate of the Russian Federation in the UK to issue a business visa to a specific citizen of the United Kingdom. Only organizations with special accreditation to the Interior Ministry have the right to issue such an invitation.

In order to issue a business invitation for a foreigner in the form of a letter from the organization, you need to fill out a questionnaire and pay by credit card or PayPal. The invitation will come to your e-mail within 5 minutes.

A business invitation on the form of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, based on a statement from the inviting party, is issued within 7-21 business days. During this time, the information submitted by the inviting company is checked and, if a British citizen is not included in the list of persons who are denied entry to Russia due to deportations or the presence of fines, an invitation is issued for him on a form protected from counterfeiting. If a British citizen violated Russian laws on his last visit, his invitation will be denied.

An electronic invitation from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Telex) is an instruction, received via a special communication channel from the Consular department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation to the Russian Consulate. In this case, the British citizen needs to provide only the Telex number and information about the inviting company, when he will be filling out the visa application form. Registration takes from 7 to 21 business days. The benefit of such an invitation is they do not require sending the original document by mail.

Receive an invitation

If the British found in Russia a company that wants to officially hire him, he needs to apply for a work visa. With such a visa, he will be able to travel to Russia without a break throughout the duration of its validity, as well as cross the borders of the Russian Federation as many times as he needs.

To get a work visa, a British citizen will need the help of his Russian employer, who will have to apply for a work permit and a work invitation, as well as send him the originals of these documents using international mail services. Based on these documents, a foreigner will be issued a short-term work visa (valid for 90 days).

After arriving of foreigner in Russia, he will have to register with the migration authority and then extend the validity of the visa for the entire duration of the work permit (1 year or 3 years). You can extend your work visa without leaving Russia.

An electronic visa is a new experimental format of visa. You don’t need an invitation for this visa, but you can apply for it through the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. For now, the electronic visa is only a single entry and cannot be extended. Based on this document, you can stay in Russia up to eight days. You need only a digital photo and a completed application form for getting this visa.

It is important that obtaining an electronic visa is available only to citizens of some countries. Currently, UK citizens cannot get an electronic visa to Russia. Full list of countries which Russia has an agreement about electronic visas with, is available on the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.