Russians Queue Up for Cyprus Visa in Moscow from the Night Before

As of 13 June 2026, the Embassy of the Republic of Cyprus in Russia has terminated its contract with the official visa operator BLS International and fully ended cooperation with its regional offices. In the absence of an accredited external service provider, applications for Cyprus national visas are now accepted exclusively in person. With no online appointment system available, embassies and consulates have seen hours-long queues, and in the capital applicants have to arrive from the night before.

Logistics breakdown and fewer application points:
Before the new rules were introduced, Russian tourists could submit visa applications at specialized BLS International centres in eight major cities across the country. At present, document submission has been reduced to just four diplomatic locations: the consular section of the Embassy of Cyprus in Moscow, as well as the general consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Krasnodar. The process of signing an agreement with a new third-party visa operator is still pending, forcing the missions to work in live-queue mode.

Two-stage waiting system and regional crisis:
According to Pavel Ageshin, head of the specialized visa company Ageshin Team, the most critical situation is in Moscow, where hundreds of people gather daily outside the consulate. In practice, applicants have to stand in line twice: on the first visit, people are only added to lists and given a date for the actual submission of documents (for example, on 25 June, appointments were being made for Wednesday, 1 July), while on the second visit the document package is submitted in person. This procedure results in significant financial and time costs for tourists from remote regions within the Moscow consular district (from Kaliningrad to the Far East), as they have to pay for several days of accommodation in the capital. The situation worsens the October 2025 crisis, when overnight duty had already been recorded outside the embassy after express courier services stopped being allowed to send documents remotely.

Current visa rules for entry:
To cross the border of the Republic of Cyprus, Russian citizens still need a valid entry visa. In addition to a Cypriot national visa (the consular fee for a short-term Category C visa is about €90), entry is also permitted with valid double-entry or multiple-entry Schengen visas, as well as with national visas issued by Romania and Bulgaria. Prior entry into Schengen countries or the above-mentioned Eastern European states is not mandatory. Travel industry representatives strongly recommend allowing significantly more time for document processing and planning trips several weeks before departure.