Visa application in third (or fourth) country.
 

I am planning to visit Moscow for 4 days in October. I understand I have to visit a Russian Consulate in person to apply for a tourist visa. The complications are as follows:

1. I am triple national, UK/Irish/Australian.

2. I live in the far West of Austria. The only Consulate in Austria is in Vienna, a 7-hour drive away. Munich would be a much easier journey.

Do I have to apply in the country in which I am resident (or a citizen of), or can I go to a consulate in Germany?

Do I have to surrender the passport that I use for the visa?

Unless something has radically changed since 2008 you don't have to visit a consulate or embassy in person and it can be done in a third country.

I'm a UK national who applied while based in Poland. I used a local travel agency next to the embassy to do the paperwork for me and it was fairly hassle free. You *will* have to surrender your passport while the application is being processed but hopefully it shouldn't take much longer than a week. Just make sure to factor this in and everything should be okay. October is 10 months away so you have plenty of time.

Thanks for the response.

I don't have a current Irish passport, so I can't surrender my British one at the moment, as I cross the Austrian/German border at least twice a day, and spot checks are becoming more common.

I guess I'll have to wait until I get my new Irish passport, then send one of them off.

I guess the alternative is to apply for the Russian Visa as an Australian. Would that be more complicated than using an EU passport?

Keep in mind that Russia follows the principle of reciprocity in their visa procedures, meaning that they'll generally make it harder to get a visa for citizens of countries that also make it hard for Russians to obtain a visa.

In practice, this means that the application form and process, visa fees as well as the place you can apply for a visa (typically the country you reside in) may be different for each of your three nationalities, and I recommend you research this on the websites of the Russian consulate.

Of course, you could just use a visa agency to do the legwork and visit to the consulate for you, which just adds 40 EUR or so to the total cost.

Thanks very much for the info. I'll check out the visa agencies in Vienna. I'm happy to send off my Australian passport (or either of my EU ones, once I have my new Irish one). If they will do it all for me, it sounds well worth the extra €40.

Don't u have an ID for Austria- Germany border checks?

That's the difficulty - no, I don't have an acceptable form of alternative ID. They accept a passport or national ID card (which the UK does not issue).

Since I speak German with a non-standard English-speakers' accent, I have been asked several times to prove my citizenship.

A driver's licence is not acceptable, as it doesn't prove citizenship. My Australian passport does not show any right of abode in the EU. So I need to keep an EU passport (at present, UK) with me at all times.

Therefore I either have to wait to get my Irish passport (which I'm getting in the wake of the Brexit vote), or apply for the Russian visa as an Australian.

Didn't know

Seems to be so.

Might be of use:
second UK passport
[url=https://www.dfa.ie/irish-embassy/switzerland/passports/top-passport-questions/second-passport-for-business-purposes/]second Irish passport[/urll]

That might be worth looking into. Thanks for the links.