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Departure from Russia


Departure from Russia

Russian law is very strict about the amount of time one can stay in Russia on a visa. You may never arrive before the entry date on your visa (you can always arrive later), and you may not depart after the exit date on your visa (likewise, you can always leave earlier) because your visa is both an entry and exit visa. Normally, the exit visa is included in an entry visa for tourists and business so long as the visa is valid. Other classes require a separate exit visa and such can take up to three weeks to process. If you overstay, even by a few minutes, you will likely be prohibited from leaving until you obtain a valid exit visa. You may be able to obtain a visa extension from the consular officer against the payment of a fine at the border if you overstayed for fewer than three days, but this is not guaranteed. Generally, though, obtaining an extension requires an intervention by your sponsor, a payment of a fine, and a wait of up to three weeks. Be especially careful if your flight or train leaves after midnight, because the border guards will not let you depart if you're leaving even 10 min after your visa expires! For example, several travelers have had problems when they've boarded a Helsinki-bound train on their day their visa expires, but their train does not cross the Finnish border until after midnight. You must present your passport, visa, and migration card at the border in order to depart. If you lost your migration card, you may be able to get by with just paying a nominal fine. If you lost your passport, your embassy can replace that for you (maybe not instantly), and your sponsor, not your embassy, must apply to the Federal Migration Service to transfer your visa to your replacement passport. Having a copy of your old visa helps with this process, but it is not sufficient to let you depart. If your overstay was due to reasons such as medical problems, the Federal Migration Service may instead issue a Home Return Certificate rather than an exit visa, which is valid to depart Russia within ten days of issue. Exit and reentry during the time of your visa requires permits. Getting these permits is a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare best avoided entirely by spending more money in advance for a multiple entry visa.

The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Russia


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Russia Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.

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