As of September 2026 Moscow holds no routine immigrant visa interviews. How an approved petition reaches a third-country post, and when Form I-485 avoids it.
Reviewed by Ekaterina Fitenko, Esq. — Florida Bar #1064536. With 20+ years of experience in the legal field, she advises Russian-speaking families on immigrant visa processing at consular posts abroad and on adjustment of status inside the United States, in English and Russian.
As of September 2026, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow does not conduct routine immigrant visa interviews, so an approved petition for a Russian national is scheduled at a designated U.S. consular post in a third country rather than in Russia. The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, Poland has handled immigrant visa cases for applicants residing in Russia. Designations have changed before and can change again, so confirm the currently designated post with the U.S. Department of State at travel.state.gov before booking anything.
This is a change of venue, not a change of law. The petition stays approved and the priority date stays what it was. What moves is the location of the interview, and with it come problems a case processed at home never raises: entry permission for the interview country, a medical examination by a physician that post accepts, and money that has to cross a sanctioned banking border.
One distinction matters at the outset. Consular processing applies to a beneficiary outside the United States. Someone already lawfully inside the country and eligible to adjust status has a second route that skips the consulate entirely, and for many of our Russian-speaking clients that route is the better one.
An approved family or employment petition does not go to the consulate directly. USCIS sends it to the National Visa Center, a Department of State facility in Portsmouth, New Hampshire that holds every immigrant visa case between USCIS approval and the consular interview. The National Visa Center assigns a case number and an invoice identification number, and everything after that happens in the Consular Electronic Application Center at ceac.state.gov.
Inside that account the applicant does four things. Pay the immigrant visa application processing fee and, for family cases, the Affidavit of Support fee. File Form DS-260, the Online Immigrant Visa and Alien Registration Application, for each applicant including children. Upload civil documents: birth certificate, marriage certificate, divorce or death certificates for prior marriages, military record, police certificates, court and prison records. Upload the financial evidence supporting Form I-864.
When the National Visa Center accepts all of it, the case becomes documentarily qualified, enters the scheduling queue for the assigned post, and only then receives an interview appointment letter. Applicants lose months here by answering a checklist letter with a partial response, because every checklist letter restarts a review cycle.
Documentary qualification and visa availability are separate gates. A documentarily qualified case in a backlogged preference category still waits for the priority date to become current under the Visa Bulletin.
Attending an interview in a third country requires lawful entry into that country, which for a Russian passport holder normally means a visa issued before travel. An interview appointment letter from a U.S. consulate is not permission to enter Poland, Kazakhstan or anywhere else. That application runs on its own timeline and carries its own refusal risk, and it has to be started well before the U.S. interview date.
Budget for more than one trip. The passport is normally retained by the consulate after a successful interview so the visa can be printed, which means either a stay of some days or a second journey to collect it. Do not buy a nonrefundable ticket home for the day after the interview.
The harder scenario is administrative processing. If the consular officer cannot conclude eligibility at the window, the case is refused under section 221(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and held for further review, with no promised end date. An applicant who flew in on a short-term visa may run out of lawful time in that country while the case sits. Ask, before you travel, what you would do if the answer is neither yes nor no.
The immigration medical examination must be performed by a panel physician authorized by the U.S. consular post handling your case, not by any physician you choose and not by a panel physician tied to a different post. Each embassy publishes its own list of authorized clinics. An examination done by a doctor in Russia, or by a panel physician for another post, is not accepted, and the money spent on it is gone.
In practice the exam happens in the interview country, usually in the days before the appointment, and the panel physician transmits results to the consulate directly. Bring your vaccination records: missing vaccinations are completed at the clinic, and every repeat visit adds days to a trip you are paying for.
The completed examination is valid for a limited period, and a visa issued on its basis carries a travel deadline tied to it. Confirm that validity period with the post rather than assuming it.
Police certificates are required from the country of nationality and from every country where the applicant lived beyond the threshold period. The Department of State standard is a certificate from your country of nationality if you lived there six months or more after age 16, from your current country of residence on the same six-month threshold, from any other country where you lived 12 months or more after age 16, and from any country where you were arrested, regardless of how long you were there. The correct issuing authority for each country is set out in the Department of State reciprocity schedule.
For a Russian national the required document is the certificate of the presence or absence of a criminal record issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation. Obtaining it from outside Russia is the part clients underestimate. The usual routes are a request through a Russian consulate abroad, or a request filed inside Russia by a relative acting under a notarized power of attorney, and both take considerably longer than the domestic in-person route. Start this before your case is documentarily qualified, not after the interview letter arrives.
Certificates also expire. One obtained too early in a slow case may have to be ordered again, which is an argument for accurate sequencing rather than delay.
Every civil document that is not in English must be submitted with a full English translation accompanied by the translator's signed certificate of competence, under 8 CFR 103.2(b)(3). A summary does not satisfy the rule, and neither does a partial translation of the fields someone considers important. Seals, marginal notations and handwritten amendments belong in the translation.
The certificate is a short signed statement in which the translator confirms competence in both languages and the completeness of the translation. The translator need not be sworn or certified, but should not be the applicant. Notarization is not required by the rule, though some posts ask for it as their own practice.
Russian-language documents create two recurring problems. Name transliteration must match the passport exactly, because a birth certificate translated with a different spelling of the same surname reads to a reviewer as a different person. And Soviet-era or regional documents carry stamps that translators skip; an untranslated stamp costs the same weeks as any other checklist letter.
An applicant already lawfully inside the United States and otherwise eligible files Form I-485, Application to Register Permanent Residence or Adjust Status, with USCIS and never attends a consular interview abroad. For many Russian nationals who entered on a visitor, student or work visa and later became the beneficiary of a petition, this removes the third-country problem entirely: no entry visa for Poland, no panel physician abroad.
Eligibility is narrower than people hope. Adjustment generally requires a lawful inspected entry and an immediately available visa number, so someone who entered without inspection is generally barred. Unlawful status or unauthorized employment bars adjustment in employment-based cases, although the immediate relative of a U.S. citizen — spouse, parent, or unmarried child under 21 — is excused from those particular bars. Section 245(k) gives a limited allowance in employment cases and section 245(i) protects a narrow group with old qualifying petitions. Which one applies is a legal question with a documentary answer, settled before the route is chosen.
One warning deserves to be blunt. Departing the United States while an adjustment application is pending, without an approved advance parole document, abandons that application. Filing Form I-131 for advance parole together with Form I-485 and waiting for the document before any travel is the standard protection. A separate rule spares certain applicants maintaining H-1B or L-1 status, but nobody should rely on it without confirming it applies to their own status.
Immigrant visa and Affidavit of Support fees are paid through the Consular Electronic Application Center, whose online payment method requires a bank account in the United States with a routing number and account number. Cards issued by Russian banks were disconnected from international card networks in 2022 and will not clear against U.S. payment systems, and some post-specific charges must be paid locally in the method that post specifies.
Solve this before the appointment, not at it. Usual solutions are payment by a U.S.-based petitioner or relative from their own account, or payment through the law firm handling the case. The payment record has to tie back to the correct invoice identification number: a payment credited to the wrong case is slow to trace, and the interview is not scheduled until the correct fee shows as paid.
Fee amounts are set by the Department of State and USCIS schedules in force on the date of payment, so confirm the current amount on the official schedule rather than a figure quoted in a forum post.
Processing location changes logistics, not entitlement. The eligibility standard for each visa category, the priority date established by the petition, the monthly Visa Bulletin and the underlying provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act all operate exactly as they would if the interview were held in Moscow.
The suspension of routine services at one post is not a ground of inadmissibility and not a mark against the applicant. An officer in Warsaw applies the same statute to the same evidence as an officer anywhere else. What the third-country route genuinely costs is time and travel money, which is the reason to compare it honestly against adjustment of status where adjustment is available.
We handle both routes for Russian-speaking clients from the Coral Springs office at 11555 Heron Bay Blvd, Suite 277, and from the Hallandale Beach office, and we will tell you which route your facts actually support, including when the answer is that you should not travel yet.
No. As of September 2026 the U.S. Embassy in Moscow does not conduct routine immigrant visa interviews, so the case is assigned to a designated post in a third country. Confirm the current designation with the U.S. Department of State at travel.state.gov, because posts have been redesignated before.
The National Visa Center assigns the post and states it in the correspondence for your case number. The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw has handled immigrant visa cases for applicants residing in Russia. Do not book travel on the basis of what another applicant was assigned last year; read your own case correspondence in the Consular Electronic Application Center.
You can ask, and the National Visa Center will forward the request, but the receiving post decides whether to accept the case and often declines when the applicant has no residence or lawful presence in that country. Treat a transfer request as a possibility to raise early through counsel, not as a scheduling tool once an appointment already exists.
Usually yes. A Russian passport holder normally needs a visa or other entry permission for the interview country, and the U.S. appointment letter does not grant it. Apply on that country's timeline, which runs independently of the immigrant visa case and can be the longest single wait in the whole sequence.
No. The examination is valid only when performed by a panel physician authorized by the specific U.S. consular post handling your case, and each embassy publishes its own list of authorized clinics. An exam performed elsewhere, including by a panel physician for a different post, is rejected and must be repeated.
Often yes. A person lawfully in the United States with an immediately available visa number files Form I-485 with USCIS and stays here. The decisive facts are a lawful inspected entry, current visa availability and whether any unlawful status or unauthorized employment bar applies. Departing while the I-485 is pending without approved advance parole abandons it.
$200 for 30 minutes, in English or Russian. Call (305) 315-3425 or email fitenkolaw@gmail.com to schedule.
This article is informational only and is not legal advice. Form editions, fees and processing times change; confirm current requirements with USCIS before filing. Reading this page does not create an attorney-client relationship.
Fitenko Law PLLC, 11555 Heron Bay Blvd, Suite 277, Coral Springs, FL 33076 (main office); 600 Three Islands Boulevard, Hallandale Beach, FL 33009 (by appointment only). Phone: (305) 315-3425. Email: fitenkolaw@gmail.com