On December 11, the U.S. consulates in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, and Vladivostok will begin to offer limited interviews for nonimmigrant visas.

Embassy Moscow also continues to offer limited interviews for immigrant, diversity and nonimmigrant visas.

As Ambassador Jon Huntsman Jr. has said, we want Russians to travel to the United States, experience our culture firsthand, study at our universities, and do business with U.S. companies. So we are pleased to resume these limited operations. We believe that people-to-people interactions and U.S.-Russian business ties are the bedrock to stability in the bilateral relationship.

Our services, however, will not return to the level we maintained prior to the Russian Federation’s unwarranted demand that we dramatically reduce the number of personnel at the U.S. Embassy and our three consulates. We continue to operate with a significantly reduced staff, and that inevitably means less capacity for visa services. While we are pleased to resume these services, their limited nature remains an unfortunate consequence of Russia’s decision