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Russia may offer easier visas to boost tourism
January 25, 2002
AP
MOSCOW: Russia plans to offer moderately priced, three-day tourist visas to some foreigners entering the country through selected points in a bid to boost tourism.
The move, which will be introduced on Feb. 1 for a one-year trial period, is a sharp departure from the current, strict Russian visa rules, which can cost travellers up to several hundred US dollars and keep them waiting for weeks.
Vladimir Kotenev, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Consular Service, said on Tuesday that the experiment "does not mean that Russia is changing over to a simplified visa regime," the Interfax news agency reported.
Foreigners must still apply for the new visas more than 48 hours before they plan to visit and "only through a travel agency organising a three-day, group visit," he said.
The 72-hour visas will be available through 29 travel companies and will be issued at Moscow's main international airport, Sheremetyevo-2, and St. Petersburg's Pulkovo airport, border crossings in the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad and a crossing between Russia and Finland, according to the news agency.
Only passport holders from Britain, Switzerland, Japan and the Western European countries that signed the European Union's 1985 Schengen agreement, which allows people to travel freely within the member states, will be eligible for the $35 visa.
Natela Shengelia of the Ministry for Economic Development's Department of Tourism said the changes are primarily targeted at bus tourists arriving in the Kaliningrad region from Germany and Finnish visitors to the St. Petersburg region.
Russia's complex visa system is partly a holdover from Soviet days, when travel by Soviet citizens and visitors was tightly restricted. It's also a response to strict rules imposed on Russian citizens traveling abroad, particularly to the United States and Western Europe, to prevent illegal immigration.
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