Zdrastvuitye!
I am (hoping) to travel to St Petersburg in December this year to study Russian at SPb state university. I applied to them back in September to arrange the necessary invitation, which I received a few weeks later, approved by the Russian Ministry of whatever.
I then applied for my visa at the Russian embassy in my country (New Zealand), and received that a few days later. Now I have booked my flights, but my travel agent is worried that I need a return flight, otherwise customs won't let me in.
This is a nuisance since even though my visa expires on Feb 01 2004, I intend to extend it while I am in Russia. Even if I can't do that, I will do some more travelling to EU countries before returning home. Either way, I doubt that I will come back via the exact same route.
The travel agent is not sure, the dean of SPb uni doesn't seem to think I need a return ticket, and I just plain can't get through to the embassy (phone rings but nobody home I guess - aren't all embassies like that?)
Can anybody confirm whether this is the case or not? I'm running out of time to verify this, and can't seem to get a straight answer from anybody!