The French Consulate in Moscow sets records issuing visas to the citizens of Russia.

      A record number of visas – 400,000 – is planned to be given to the Russians by the French Consulate before the end of 2013.

      The Consulate issued 360,000 visas in 2012, 40 % of them were long-term ones, and the number of refusals did not exceed 1 %, as the French Ambassador to Russia Jean de Gliniasty reported. If the forecast is correct, then the number of 400,000 will become a new record for the French Consulate in the Russian Federation. The diplomat said that the Consulate General of France in Moscow is the largest visa office of the Fifth Republic in the whole world, it produces more than 15% of the total number of French visas. About 200 travel agencies are accredited by it.

      As the study conducted by the Tourism Development Agency in France ‘Atout France’ showed, the Russians who had never been in this country before, want to visit its capital first of all, as well as the Cote d' Azur, Provence, Brittany and the Champagne-Ardennes region. At that, France opened five visa centres in Russia - in Rostov-on-Don, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod and Vladivostok in 2013.