Originally Posted by alanh
You might check out
www.waytorussia.net -- they have some good information.
Typically what you can do is get a travel agency to make a tourist invitaion for you for $30. This includes a token hotel reservation that you don't have to use. Once you get there, there are a couple of ways to work out the registration. The official way involves several forms and is described on the above site. The other way is to pay your inviting travel agent to work it out, for about $30-50.
They don't care about the specifics of the reservation, or that it was at the same place specified on your invitation, they just care that you got some sort of registration.
Services such as this are standard. There is nothing wrong or illegal about this approach.
I do not know how the Russian Embassy in India works, but having a visa issued outside of one's home country is not necessarily a problem--particularly if your friend is an Indian citizen. I am a US citizen, and have had numerous Russian visas issued in the UK (where it is in fact faster and cheaper than in the US). However, nationals of certain countries can [formally] only get Russian visas issued in their country of nationality. As another poster stated, it would depend on how efficient the Russian Embassy in India is and the relative cost and convenience factors. If possible, I would suggest that your friend ask around aboout the general reputation for efficiency and accuracy of the Russian Embassy there, and then if the results are not too unfavorable to try to obtain the visa there. Faster processing is more expensive in the U.S. (and most other countries), and particularly if there is a problem/delay (e.g., from the U.S. visa status) when having the visa issued inthe U.S., the cost will increase commensurately. By starting the process in India, the month in the U.S. is still available as a fall-back.