UN Permanent Mission announces worsening situation with US visas for Russian diplomats

UN, 23 March – RIA Novosti. Sergey Leonidchenko, head of legal reference of the Permanent Representation, said that the situation regarding the issuance of US visas to Russian diplomats working in the permanent mission at the UN has deteriorated, 37 people are waiting for their visas to be extended, one has been waiting for six months. The mission of the Russian Federation to the organization speaks at the meeting of the Committee on relations with the host country. The text of the speech was published on the website of the Russian mission on Thursday.

“The situation with visas is deteriorating. For almost six months, a diplomat – Victoria Mazaeva, who had to come to New York to work on the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly – is waiting for a visa. The permanent mission has been challenged. Leonidchenko to work on this committee at full capacity,” said.

According to him, in general, at the moment 37 employees of the permanent mission of Russia and 49 members of their families are waiting for the extension of visas.

“The average waiting time continues to increase and is close to 5 months. De facto, such employees are deprived of the opportunity to go to their homeland, even for serious humanitarian reasons. Meanwhile, their relatives cannot recover because the American side does not give them visas,” he said.

According to Leonidchenko, the situation regarding visa discrimination for citizens of the Russian Federation who have passed the competition for filling vacancies at the UN Secretariat or are currently working there is not improving.

“There are terrible situations where the heads of the secretariat have not been able to obtain visas for years, all this time they have not been able to fulfill their duties fully. Remember that they were recruited by a world organization, not by a foreign ministry,” the diplomat said. aforementioned.

As Leonidchenko pointed out, the United States thought it had the right to decide on its own who would work and who would not work in the UN secretariat. “The question arises when the Secretary-General will at least protect the rights of his own employees and the organization, which has the right to elect employees without interference from the host country,” the diplomat said.

“The statistics on issuing visas to Russian delegates from the capital are no better. There hasn’t been a single UN event in New York since January 2023 without a visa issue,” he said.

According to Leonidchenko, due to visa refusal, Russian delegations were either completely absent or understaffed at UNIDIR’s working group meetings on contingent property, the 57th session of the Commission on Continental Shelf Borders. Cyber ​​Stability Conference, 4th session of the Open Ended Working Group on security issues in the field of information and communication technologies use and information and communication technologies themselves 2021-2025, UNCITRAL’s second working group.