Russian Foreign Ministry to Vestnik Kavkaza: visa-free regime with Georgia not excluded

Vestnik Kavkaza, which applied to the Russian Foreign Ministry earlier with the question of whether Russia and Georgia get closer to the facilitation of a visa regime, today received an official response from the Information and Press Department.

"The significant measures to  simplify the visa regime for Georgian citizens have been undertaken in December last year in the context of the ongoing process of normalization of the Russian-Georgian relations and in order to stimulate positive developments between our two countries by a decision of the Russian President Vladimir Putin," the ministry reminded.
"The registration of business, work, educational and humanitarian visas of any multiplicity, as well as private visas regardless of the presence of kinship between the inviter and the invitee on the actual invitation, issued in the prescribed manner by the Russian Federal Migration Service, was started," the Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign ministry responded.

"We are disposed to continue taking steps to alleviate the conditions of communication between citizens of the two countries, and do not exclude the possibility that in the future there will be a visa-free regime between the two countries," the document says.

"As it is known, there is the visa-free regime for citizens of many countries in Georgia, including Russia. But at the same time, the law on occupied territories is operating, in accordance with which, persons who have previously visited Abkhazia and South Ossetia are subject to administrative and criminal penalties," the Foreign Ministry said, adding that "in 2015, three Russian citizens have been imprisoned on the basis of this law, and a few more were fined".

The Russian Foreign Ministry explained that "this situation, as well as the impossibility in the absence of diplomatic relations with Georgia to provide full consular protection of citizens does not allow us to visit this country the Russians."

"We would like that more favorable conditions for the gradual removal of obstacles to mutual trips of citizens of our countries were created, as the Russian-Georgian relations are improving," the document says.

"Progress in this matter depends on Tbilisi's constructability," the information and press department of the Russian Foreign Ministry concluded.