US Embassy in Russia must cut consular staff by 75% due to new Kremlin attack

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow announced this Friday that from the next May 12 It will cut its consular staff by 75% on the announcement of the Russian government of its intention to ban the local recruitment of Russian and third country nationals.

In a statement, the US representation said that reduce the provision of consular services, which will be limited to emergency aid to US citizens and the issuance of a “very limited number of immigrant visas for life and death cases“.

“Processing of nonimmigrant visas for non-diplomatic travel will cease”, points out the note posted on the Embassy’s website, which stated that in addition, routine notary services such as passport renewals or birth registrations will not be provided.

In addition, strongly recommended to US citizens who are in Russia with their expired visa to leave the country before June 15th, the grace period granted to all illegal aliens established by the Russian government due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“We regret that the actions of the Russian government have forced us to reduce our consular staff by 75%, and we will strive to provide as many services to US citizens as possible, ”the statement concluded.

On April 23, the President of Russia, Vladimir Poutine, issued a decree on “measures to counter hostile actions “ foreign states, which include, among other things, the ban on recruiting local staff in their diplomatic representations in Russia.

On Wednesday, the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergey LavrovHe stressed that Russia does not practice hiring local people for its embassies and therefore may prohibit foreign legations accredited to the country from doing the same.

Lavrov announced that the Russian government is working on the elaboration of a “list of hostile countries”, which will be published shortly.

According to the newspaper Izvestia, ten countries could appear on this list, among which United States, Poland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, as well as United Kingdom, Ukraine and Australia.

(With information from EFE)

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