The services of Russian visa center that opened on January, 23 in Great Britain can be used by all the inhabitants of the country regardless of citizenship. On January, 30 the same center will be opened in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Visa center is located in London City, 15-17 Gee Of street, London, EC1V 3RD. The company Visa Facilitation Services (VFS) will govern center. As described Yuri Fedotov, the ambassador RF to Great Britain, this is the same company, which governs British visa center in Moscow. “In fact, this is monopolist, there are one additional or two companies, but VFS opened here the visa centers of India, Belgium. We signed with them the agreement”, reported the ambassador.
The cost of the visa after the opening of the center will grow a little, but it will remain equivalent to the cost of the British visa.
Visa center will unload the embassy by taking upon itself the entire turnover of the documents, leaving to the visa department of the embassies only the issue of the visa.
Furthermore, this distribution of responsibilities must reduce the waiting time of visa and liquidate the lines for supplying the documents.
According to the “RIA News” agency, every year the consular department in London issue more than 100 thousand visas to Russia. And 40 additional thousand are issued by the consulate in Edinburgh. “We hoped some time that sooner or later the negotiations about lightening of visa regime will be renewed, and then the load can be lowered, reported to agency Yuri Fedotov, however this prospect is not examined, but taking this into account it was decided to go along another way and to open our visa center”.
It is necessary to consider that this innovation will not touch the owners of the diplomatic and official passports, which plan to apply for Russian visa. They as before had to give documents into the embassy RF.
Montag, 26. Januar 2009
