Does anyone know how to get into Ukraine?

Blog de Connard delves once again into the insanities of Ukrainian bureaucracy, braving his sanity so we don’t have to.  Today’s target is Ukraine’s somewhat muddled visa policy towards Americans, in which ‘visa free entry’ would probably be better described as ‘entry free visa’.

So earlier this month, Ukraine finally decided to institute a visa-free travel regime for American citizens…except for that they really didn’t…

…How do I know this? First, the Ukranian Embassy in London returned my brother’s recently filed visa application back to him with no action taken, only telling himunofficiallyy by a phone call that he didn’t need a visa. Second, when I called up citizen services at the American Embassy in Kiev to try to find out what the official policy is…they refused to give me an answer since no one seems to know what theofficiall Ukrainian position is. What they could tell me was that they had received several phone calls from Americans complaining that a Ukrainian Embassy had not issued them a visa because they "didn’t need one" and were then turned away at a Ukrainian border point because THEY DIDN’T HAVE A VISA.

Way to improve your country’s image as a backwards soviet relic with a nightmare of abureaucracyy. Let’s tell…no, encourage… people to come visit…then turn them away when they get here.

Why the USSR didn’t implement a policy of confusion like this during the Cold War I’ll never understand.  Certainly, no spy, or invading army come to that, would have ever been able to penetrate the Soviet Union’s borders had they needed to do mortal combat with this army of faceless bureaucrats.

Tagged as: Ukraine