From January to September 2023, 225,000 Russian visas of all categories were issued in European countries, of which 141,000 were tourist visas. According to the director of the consular department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Alexey Klimov, the number of tourist visas issued year after year increased by 57%.
As Klimov said in an interview with RIA, the total number of visas issued decreased by 10%.
The representative of the Foreign Ministry emphasized that even taking into account the growth, the figures are still far from the pre-pandemic figures of 2019, when in the first nine months 1,645 million visas were issued, of which 1,112 million were tourist visas.
Starting August 1, 2023, residents of various countries will be able to obtain an electronic visa to enter the territory of the Russian Federation. 70 thousand people have already taken advantage of this opportunity, of which 60% were Chinese citizens.
During the same period, citizens of 55 countries eligible for e-visas received almost 59,000 traditional paper visas. Klimov is confident that the trend to replace paper visas with electronic ones will intensify in the future.
In addition, in a conversation with the agency, Klimov provided data on the number of Russian Federation passports issued abroad. In the first nine months of this year, 15.1 thousand people obtained Russian citizenship abroad. This is almost 36% less than in the same period in 2022, when the figure was 23.55 thousand.
From January to September 2023, 4.4 thousand people renounced Russian citizenship, more than in the entire year 2022: then 4.3 thousand people decided to renounce Russian citizenship.
Photo: Victor Maschek / Shutterstock
Author:
Akhmed Sadulayev
Source: RB
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