Invitation for Russian Visa

Grandpa Hassan

Hi,

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice about the best way to get an invitation for a Russian visa

We need to go to the Russian Embassy in Dublin for the Visa itself, seeing as we are US citizens living in Ireland. That is no problem, and the embassy tells us that we can get the visa if we visit in person with the appropriate invitation.

So as to the invitation itself:

We are going to Russia for about 2 weeks in June. Moscow and St Petersburg. We don't want to book hotels for that period though....rather will stay with a friend, rent an apartment, Airbnb, couchsurfing etc. So we will not have a permanent address.

I thought about booking a hotel for one night when we arrive and getting them to send the invitation, but if we book in moscow for just the first night the hotel will only give an invitation valid for a couple of days.

I thought about booking a hotel for a couple of weeks, getting the invitation, and then cancelling the reservation before we travel, but the details that you put on the immigration forms must match that on the invitation.

We want to travel and not be tied down to a particular itinerary.

So, in short, I was wondering if anyone knew of an agency in Ireland who might provide an invitation for a couple of weeks without us having a hotel address. All the UK on-line firms as far as I can tell either need you to be a UK citizen, or need the address of where you are staying.

There must be people that go to Russia and just travel (backpackers etc)

Thanks for any advice

GP

spurious

In my experience, the hotel will give you the invite for as long as you want. We even got invites for some friends who were joining us later and not staying in the hotel at all.

Make sure you have a postal order to pay the visa fee in the embassy. They won't accept cards, cash or cheques.

Shedite27

We used this site... http://www.waytorussia.net/

THey send you an invitation (for a fee), you can get in, you're then free to travel as you wish, stay where you want etc.

Grandpa Hassan

Shedite27 wrote: »

We used this site... http://www.waytorussia.net/

THey send you an invitation (for a fee), you can get in, you're then free to travel as you wish, stay where you want etc.

That's great, thanks. Looks the easiest way to do it by far.

I didn't really get this bit though (highlighted below). Seems like you don't have to select a specific hotel when applying for the visa support documents, but you do when you apply for the visa?

Note, that if the hotel you're staying is not in the list of the available hotels in the Russian visa support application form below, or if you're staying at an apartment / with friends, or if you don't know where you're staying, you can just choose any hotel and then, depending on how important it is for you, request the visa support processing company to write the right hotel in the visa support documents (they'll also add it into the list). It's always better if your visa application form that you submit at the consulate has the same hotel as the one written in the invitation.

I guess it will be easier just to go ahead and book a hotel for our first night in Moscow, just to make sure that we have firm accomodation details that we can write on each form