Cyprus has resumed visa processing at its third-party centers across Russia, nearly a month after a contract lapse forced the country’s consulates to temporarily take over operations.
Visa processing through private operator BLS International resumed Monday. The service had been suspended on June 13 following the expiration of the company’s previous agreement, forcing the Embassy of Cyprus’ consular section in Moscow, alongside consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Krasnodar, to handle all applications directly.
BLS International’s visa application centers operate in eight Russian cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Kazan, Samara, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don and Novosibirsk.
On the company’s homepage, BLS International confirmed it has resumed operations in Russia.
Cyprus is a member of the European Union, which suspended its visa facilitation agreement with Russia in 2022 and moved to deny Russian citizens multi-entry visas last November.
Those collective restrictions have dramatically curbed travel, slashing the number of EU visas issued to Russians from several million annually to hundreds of thousands.
Last month, a group of European countries urged the EU to adopt “new restrictive and binding visa measures” for Russian nationals looking to vacation within the Schengen area.
Russian opposition figure Yulia Navalnaya spoke out against the proposal in September, warning that broad bans would be a “serious mistake” by reinforcing the Kremlin’s narrative that Europe is inherently hostile to all Russians.
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