BenNomad

After you log in, is there a menu in the upper left corner with a "Continue" button? Press "Continue" and it should take you to the next page for selecting passport delivery options. At least that was my experience with Warsaw.

FYI if the messages you get from Warsaw start with "We understand you want .... blah blah blah" and end with the sentence "We hope you found this information useful" then it's just a pre-formulated reply (and maybe even AI-generated imo). If the reply has typos then you know you're dealing with a thinking human. My wife ended up with two different interview dates scheduled in Warsaw (one that we scheduled ourselves and one that they scheduled automatically) and it took two tries emailing them at ustraveldocs this week to sort it out. So, make sure you're getting a genuine reply from Warsaw. I don't know anything about extending a K-1 but it sounds like it can be extended even after the four months expire. From Travel.state.gov: My Petition Expired – Can It Be Extended? The I-129F petition is valid for four months from the date of approval by USCIS. A consular officer can extend the validity of the petition if it expires before visa processing is completed.

My wife did the medical exam in Moscow yesterday at the MOM/IOM clinic (close to the Moscow Zoo). I don't know if it's necessary to go into much detail here, but they did confirm that they will send the results electronically to Warsaw. They didn't need the embassy interview letter or DS-260 confirmation page. Didn't need to bring any passport photos; they did the photos there. She did have to get some vaccinations, and they don't offer vaccinations at the MOM clinic. But there's another clinic a short walk away called Medsi (Медси) which required her to to have an appointment with their own doctor before they would give her shots. Overall it took around 3-4 hours because of having to do those shots. She had to get a flu shot and a tetanus booster, but no COVID shot required of course. I recommend getting all your shots done in advance and if you don't have records, then get antibody tests done in advance too. My wife had a rubella shot years ago but doesn't have a record of it. Yesterday they told her to get that shot but that all the required shots couldn't be done at the same time, and that she would have to wait a month (!) between shots. But she did an antibody test for rubella and the results came back ok (thanks to the lab people who work on weekends!) So, all is good but I got a little nervous thinking the interview might be in jeopardy because of one vaccine.

They told me they couldn't guarantee an interview date before the end of the year.

My wife's interview will be in Warsaw, so doing the exam in Moscow is definitely allowed. Not sure about Almaty, whether it has to be done locally or not. There are other threads where the med exam in Almaty has been discussed. My wife just now read on Telegram that someone did the exam in Moscow and the results were sent electronically after 7 days (in their case, to Warsaw).

For those who've done the exam in Moscow this year, are the results given in a sealed envelope or sent electronically? Can the envelope be sent by courier to a given address in Russia? Just wondering if my wife needs to plan a few days' wait time in Moscow to pick up the results.

I heard of one case in Jerusalem whose October interview was rescheduled for April, which is a pretty long wait. If I were you I'd wait until December to see if there's a better chance of the embassy reopening, and if not, then look at transfering. We had an interview scheduled in December too, but we have now been transferred back to Warsaw. I simply asked Warsaw if it was too late to cancel the transfer to Jerusalem, but they took the initiative to take our case back without waiting for a formal request from us.

I can send you a link in a private message. The topic is dicussed on Forum Vinskogo but my wife also read the same thing on a Telegram channel. I'll ask her for the link. Not sure how many countries are checking hotel bookings. Greece sent my wife an email notice of the visa being cancelled the very day we were supposed to arrive in Athens.

Did you try getting a visa to Hungary? I'm reading now that they will check to make sure you haven't cancelled your hotel bookings.

Yeah it's really bad news. My wife just read that someone's interview which was supposed to be next week has been cancelled and automatically rescheduled for April! ☹️

@ah-no @barbieland are you still assigned to Moscow?

Oh, I see. Got it. So I hear that a number of people with interviews scheduled in Jerusalem in the next month or so are considering requesting a transfer out of Jerusalem to somewhere else, or even back to Warsaw. Jerusalem made it clear that they would not transfer a case out once they received it, but that was before the war started and maybe they will change their stance on that. The point is, the number of people lining up for transfers is increasing. If your case is assigned to Warsaw, and your wife/fiancee is in Russia (or Belarus) where she can apply for a Schengen, then that may be your best option at this point. Even if you miss the first interview due to a rejected Schengen or other reason, you can reschedule the interview for a later date. Having said that, it takes very little effort to write to an embassy and request a transfer, and in my experience the rejections came back the same day, so only a little time was spent agonizing over what the answer would be.

I got my my passport renewed in Belgrade last summer and there were Russian students getting interviewed at the same time. Basically there's just one big waiting room with multiple windows. You could clearly hear the questions they were asking and the applicants' answers. I thought they usually do separate time slots for US citizen services and visa interviews, but at that time everyone was together.

I suspect that more people are getting to Warsaw for interviews than we think and they are just not posting about. The difficulty with the IR1/CR1 is the limited amount of time they give you, like around six weeks, from interview letter to the interview itself. If your wife can get her medical done and out of the way in Moscow after DQ but before the interview letter, then you can plan on applying for a Schengen immediately after getting the interview date. Italy takes about a month to process the visa (just one example). Has your wife had a Schengen visa in the past few years? Some countries are giving longer visa validity or multi-entry visas if it's not the first Schengen. And if you can't get to the interview in Warsaw for whatever reason, there's always the possibilty to reschedule the interview for a later date. Serbia is designated for Russian student visa appplicants and the interview must be in English (no interpreters allowed). But like @millefleur suggested, they might be open to transfers in the current situation. How about Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan) or Dushanbe (Tajikistan)? I haven't heard of anyone trying to transfer there but they might be worth contacting. There's also an embassy in Turkmenistan but from what I read it seems a bit difficult to get there, even for Russian citizens (perhaps that's an advantage? meaning they probably get very few transfer requests).

Greece

Yes, they required a sponsor letter. Here's the one we submitted. We didn't know in advance, so I had to do it very quickly and send it to my wife while she was still at the window. It's very simple but they accepted it. They said the letter had to be in Russian, while the application itself had to be only in English.

You'd have to leave and re-enter the Schengen zone in order to drive from Greece to Poland, but you could drive from Hungary, Germany. etc. My wife says she read posts from people trying to get to Warsaw in the past year that there have been random checks at airports and even someone not being allowed to board a flight to Poland, but that is probably extremely rare.

That's right, you can request multiple countries. We applied for 14 days in Greece and 3 in Italy and got approved. Take into consideration how long the consulate takes to make a decision and return the passport.

Check out Forum Vinskogo and discussion/statistics about getting visas to Hungary. Seems like a logical choice to me but I didn't read much about Russians flocking to Hungary for some reason. Maybe Hungary has a high rejection rate? Maybe it's an issue of showing a believable travel plan? After all, how many people go to Hungary on a two-week vacation? Forum Vinskogo is the place to get that info.

Maybe the State Dept is trying to make a new policy decision and is holding off for now on reassignments to Warsaw. Just a guess. The info on the Moscow Embassy website hasn't changed and still says they are closed and that Warsaw is processing Russian visas.

Try writing to Almaty directly to see if they are still a processing post for IR-5 cases from Russia and Belarus. Try writing to Tashkent, too. Tashkent was also designated to take IR-5 cases.

My wife actually got a Schengen visa (for Greece) but we were still able to transfer the case the Jerusalem. So I don't think it's an absolute rule that you have to be denied the Schengen in order to transfer (to Jerusalem).

Good luck and I hope they do the transfer for you. I think probably everybody was under the same impression as you, that it happens automatically.

Greece has potential only if your application is going to the consulates in St. Petersburg or Moscow. The consulate in Novorossiysk belongs to the People's Republic of Greece (I'm being sarcastic) and they will not let you travel to Poland. Found that out the hard way.... That one can know their interview date so far in advance is news to me. If we were given more time to get the Schengen visa, we would have applied for Italy. France is the most desired one but very difficult to get an appointment at the visa center. France and Italy will probably take about a month to process the visa and they are more likely to give you a bigger window for travel. Greece makes decisions quickly but they are tight with their travel windows. Forum Vinskogo is the place to study the Schengen question in detail (in Russian) and you can get lost in that forum.....

Did you know about public bus 231 that goes to Bethlehem from Jerusalem? I read a recent blog post about tourists taking it and it seems like a good alternative to paying $$$$ for a taxi. When you enter back into Israel from the West Bank, do the Israelis scan your passport into their system? Can't think of how else they'd know you had been there. Did your fiance have issues returning to Israel because of that?