Whoever is booking your cruise for your, and/or the cruise company itself should give you all the information you might need to know.

If not, it took me a good 3 minutes to find this from the government. http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1006.html

I went to Russia by cruise ship last month and I didn't need a visa. As long as you book an excursion with a licensed company, you will not need one.

You need to check with your cruise line (not just Cruise Critic) as to whether or not you need the visa.

As for how much it costs... An internet search returns a bunch of sites that, upon scrutiny, say they're not the official Russian Embassy site. This one -- with the circa-mid-90's design -- apparently is:
http://www.ruscon.org/main_ENG.html

It says that the visa process has been outsourced to Invisa Logistics Company, where the prices for visas -- including transit ones -- do appear to be almost $200/pp:
http://www.ils-usa.com/price-list/

(Note that I've made the assumption that you're using a US passport. Visa prices differ depending on nationality!)

We took a river cruise in Russia last year and were told we needed a Visa and got ours. We had free days in Moscow and St. Pete's and went about on our own. But Viking (company we went with) didn't say that if you only book their excursions you don't need a Visa. Not sure about regular cruise ships (not river cruises) that just stop in St. Pete's for a day or two. Perhaps in that case, with a "licensed company" which meets you right at your ship and delivers you back again, it may be different.

If you are doing a riverboat cruise in Russia you will need a visa. Those travelling on large cruise ships with a short stay in St. Petersburg do not.
We recently applied for a Russian visa at the Russian visa center in DC. The cost per visa was $170. If you go through a visa service it will cost more as you need to pay for the service. The key is to have the proper paperwork.

I'm really surprised that your cruise company can't provide this information. Can you share what company you're using for the trip?

I am leaving for a river cruise in Russia (Moscow to St. Petersburg) in 3 weeks. I recieved my visa last week. It took approximately 2 weeks from the time I submitted the visa application to receive my visa.

The cruise company I am going with (AMA Waterways) does not handle the visa procurement process but recommends a visa company by the name of ZVS for it's clients to use and in return we received a discount on ZVS's regular processing fee.

First you must obtain a letter of invitation, again, AMA Waterways did not provide this to me, I had to obtain it through ZVS. I can't recall the amount I paid for that, I think $50, which may have been a special rate since I was an AMA Waterways client.

Then I had to complete the online visa application, gather all the required documents for submission and submit that and a duplicate copy to ZVS for processing.

The Visa price is $140, there is an intermediary company called ILS, which ZVS had to go through for the visa and their fee is $30. Then ZVS has their processing fee of $50 (but without the AMA Waterways connection it would be $99)and I had to pay for return shipping. So, I paid $240 for my Visa, plus $50 for the invitation letter.

If you live near a city where there is an ILS office, you can cut out the visa processing company, in my case that was ZVS, and submit your application directly to ILS and then you would not have to pay for the visa processing company.

You may want to Google the Washington Post Travel section, last week there was an article by a woman who had to go through the visa process...it was eye-opening.

Hope this helps in your trip planning.

LCI - I hope you'll post a report upon your return. Russia is on my list of places I'd like to visit and I would want to do a river cruise. Thanks!

There are plenty of trip reports here and elsewhere on the web.

This is a good one

http://www.fodors.com/community/europe/my-river-cruise-in-russia.cfm

It's five years old, but we went more recently and all was quite similar.

I was in NYC for a month several months before going to Russia last year, so I thought I'd save money and go to the Russian Embassy myself and get it. After standing in line there for several hours (getting there before they opened) and only moving forward a few spaces, they came out and announced that was all they were taking that day. I talked with several people in line -- some had been there a number of days before. The visa is not cheap, but I'd use a service to get one, as I eventually wised up and did.

I think the cruise confusion is that if you are doing an overnight cruise that just stays in St. Petersburg or somewhere you do not need a visa, but I'm pretty sure you do need one for the full river cruise and certainly if you are spending other nights on your own.

So 1965 you are definitely getting the correct advice here. 1) Yes, you definitely need a visa. 2) It's definitely not $30 to $45, and I'm not sure where you ever got .that information. Most Russian visas are $170.

To be clear, you need a tourist visa, not a transit visa, and you need to arrange it in full before you leave for your cruise. But it's far too early to do that now. You also need confirmed reservations, presumably from the cruise line. They should know what you need and should provide the necessary confirmations along with some instructions and information on which documents to submit. I would not bother with a separate visa expediting company because that's just going to add $70 or $80 onto the cost, but you can certainly do that. They will provide more hand-holding. But follow your cruise line's instructions, and do this after the first of the year.

You'll have to mail away your passport and might not have it back for a couple of weeks, so be prepared for that.

Doug I'm a little confused by part of your reply "I would not bother with a separate visa expediting company". Where would you send the application? I am under the impression you can now ONLY get a Russian Visa through an expediting company and cannot get one by sending your forms directly to the consulate. No? Or are you only referring to not using an additional expediting company to get the letter of invitation?

djkbooks - Rudy's trip report is 10 years old and he used Viking. I'm interested in LCI's trip with AMA Waterways. I've seen other references to Viking and GCT trips but not AMA Waterways.

this person is not going on a cruise to russia, but is going on a river cruise once they reach russia...

thus they need a visa..

go to the russian embassy site and you can read it all... i believe they redirect you to a servicer... while you pay for the service, this group makes sure you have completed the paperwork correctly before submission..

Neo...

I believe Doug was referring to an additional expediting company (the one I used was called ZVS)

A few months ago (May, I believe) the Russian Consulate changed the process and no longer directly accepts applications from individuals. Applications now must be submitted to ILS. I cannot recall exactly what ILS stands for but I believe it is the company or division the Russian consulate has outsourced the visa handling process to.

If you live near a city where ILS has an office you can set up an appointment with ILS and submit your application to them for a $30 fee. (No way around that fee)

If (like me) you do not live in or near a city with an ILS office or can't get to a city with an ILS office, because they require an interview/appointment for you to submit the application to them, then the other option is to use a visa procurement (expediting) company and there will be additional fees for their services added to the cost of the visa.

Doug...if this is not correct, please chime in.

adrienne...I generally write trip reports and post them here on Fodors when I return. I anticipate I will write one for my upcoming Russia river cruise trip, and post it sometime in late August/early September. So there will be an account of my experience with AMA. And for what it's worth, I did do a search here on Fodors about AMA and there were a handful of posts, but most simply asking if anyone had used them before and most were pertaining to their cruises of the Danube and Rhine, so my account of the Russia cruise may be a first here on Fodors.

For those interested in the Washington Post article I mentioned in my post above here is a link to it:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/getting-a-russian-visa-takes-a-lot-of-application/2012/07/05/gJQAgArxRW_story.html

Hope this information is helpful.

LCI - I know you do write reports and I've read some of them and appreciate the time and effort they take. The Post article was very interesting. Even if you live in/near a city with a Russian consulate it seems to be worth paying for a service.

Scatcat,

There is a difference between a river cruise and an ocean cruise. For an ocean cruise you might not need a visa but for a river cruise you do.

We went to the ILS office in DC the day after the article appeared in the Washington Post. Needless to say we were somewhat concerned but decided to give it a try anyhow. We were in and out in 45 minutes. The key is having the proper paperwork. If you read that article you will see the writer did not have the paperwork he needed.
You will need:
* a cover letter. I found an example when I googled Russian Visa application cover letter.
* An invitation and a voucher which I got from the company I will be travelling with
* a passport with 2 empty pages and will not expire for 6 months after your return
* a visa application which I found on line
* $170 cash or cashiers check at the ILS office

Russian Visas are provided by an outside vendor, but they are not an expediting company. Several companies provide various visa services to many countries. Travisa, for example, processes visas for India, and I used it for my trip there. ILS provides visa services for Russia. You can also hire a company to apply for the visa on your behalf, but that's what I think isn't necessary unless you don't feel comfortable doing all the paperwork yourself and are worried you don't have everything you need. I hope that clarifies things.

There continues to be a lot of confusion about visa.
It does not help that posts and articles stay up on the internet for years after they are obsolete.

Other than international cruise passengers or passengers of two ferry cruises by Peterline, you need a vias, either Tourist visa or Business Visa for a river cruise. The application that includes: Passport photo, completed application form(American citizens have to fill out a more intrusive 2 page application because Russians have to submit to even worse if applying for US visas), the Consular fee by money order. The current fee is $140 for the consulate and $30 for the drop off point now as of May 12th 2012, a company names ILS. You can no longer visit the consulate to apply in person and you have not been able to apply by mail for 5 years. The application is now prepared on-line with the Foreign Ministry's web site. Filling out the document on-line stores the information in their Database in Moscow and it allows you to print the hard copy that goes long with the application. Also the passport is needed, and must be valid 6 months past the expected exit date from Russia. The visa is a pasted-in sticker that takes up a whole passport page. Two free unused pages are needed.
The final requirement is Visa Support, often called Invitation. It is a two part document that is issued by your host in Russia. Only hotels authorized to host foreign guests and tour operators are legal sources for Visa support for Tourist Visas. There are lots of visa services selling this document but it is not strictly legal and it is possible to have serious problems if caught. I had a very unpleasant experience when the Immigration officials contacted me in Russia saying my visa was illegal. I bought a visa support document from Travisa in San Francisco which was essentially a rip off in the first place. But when I got to Russia and was there for a couple weeks I was confronted by the fact that the visa sponsor that Travisa sold documents from, was not really a company and investigators for the immigration service were trying to track down approximately 3,000 holders of these illegal visas. For this I paid a great deal to Travisa, where they bumped up the price a couple times after I had submitted my order, each time saying they needed to pay more for faster processing times. The charge escalated to over $500.
That was the easy part. I had to attend hearings and hire a lawyer in Russia and eventually pay a $3000 fine and talked my way out of being deported.
I was in a hurry so used a visa service. I complained to Travisa both in SF and their national headquarters and never got a response. Years ago I had another bad experience with www.GotoRussia.com that also ended up being a major hassle.
If you are booked in a hotel that can legally host you, they will provide the visa support when you book. Some smaller hotels charge $25 or so but most send it for free. Tour operators will send it for free if you book a tour with them. If a river cruise boat company is authorized to host foreign guests they will have to register as a tour operator also so will have the right to issue the visa support for free. It costs nothing to create it and send by email, except for the labor of typing in a few lines. It is an automated process inmost hotels and tour operators which regularly work with foreign guests. Technically your sponsor/host is responsible for you while in Russia. If in country 7 days or longer, they must register your visa with the OVIR(office of visas and passports), or post office. You can tell if the company can host or sponsor your stay or have you in their hotel, they will have a registration number displayed on their web site. That is called the MBT Number and is given to them when registered as a foreign visitor authorized service. I would question the cruise company if they do not supply that visa support, it means that they might not be authorized to work with foreigners. The main requirement in getting an MBT number is posting a substantial bond that proves financial responsibility. The fund created can be claimed against by visitors who do not get what was promised.
A cover letter is often mentioned as being needed but the consulate do not require it and do not even use it if one is supplied in the application.
Anyway, that is the status Russian visas as of August 2 2012

Wow! My head is spinning, but I think I now have a much better idea of what to expect,thanks to all of you responders. The Gate 1 agent told me when I booked that they will provide the invitation letter and I got the idea that they would help me through the process if need be. But she didn't mention cost. Now I know and will not be shocked when I have to fork over a few more hundred dollars for our 2 visas. Thanks again to all of you for all the good info.

We used Gate One last December for our trip to China. We were on our own with regards to obtaining our Visa, which we did in person at the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles.

We just visited St Petersburg on our own in June. We did not have to get a Visa because we took the Peterline from Helsinki roundtrip. We stayed just under 72 hrs in St Pete.

According to the Peterline website we were required to have a letter from our B&B stating we had a reservation and had paid in advance for our room. The only person who looked at the letter was the agent at the terminal in Helsinki prior to our boarding the ship.