Trip to Ukraine, visa?

I'm looking over visa information for a trip to Ukraine. I don't plan on going until next summer, but why not start researching early? Anyhow, I've heard obtaining the visa to Ukraine can be difficult. I want to travel there to spend about a couple weeks to a month with somebody. The site says I don't need an invitation letter to get a private visa, but later on in the section it says I need documents proving Ukrainian background(which I don't have). Or does it. Eh? I'm confused. Maybe someone can help clarify this to me:
http://www.ukrconsul.org/visa/index5.htm#Private

Has anyone here traveled to Ukraine with a similar visa? If only their visa requirements were as simple as Russia's...

what's his name... humm. That jhon guy.. yum what's his nick name ??? OH. ! golondskiy yozh ! he went to ukraine, and he's not ukrainian. I think that ukraine backround crаp is exactly that, crаp.

If it's anything like Russia (and from what I've heard, it's quite similar) a private visa is not the way to go. Check out how long a tourist visa lasts, is it 30 days? Don't be put off by something saying 'it must be arranged by a tour company' blah blah or similar nonsense, because that can be got around and you can still travel independently.
Let us know what you find out, I'd love to go to Kiev one day.

Thanks for your advice. Why is it that I shouldn't go with the private visa? Anyhow, I e-mailed the Ukrainian consulate about it so hopefully they'll get back to me sometime. About the tourist visa, yeah, it said something about a travel agency, how does one get around that? I might mention that I don't plan to travel around inside Ukraine a whole lot during the trip. Hopefully I'll see Kiev. But I'll be staying in Khmelnitskyi for most of the trip.

Waxwing, sir, surely you could offer more advice on the matter?

Pravit, i think what you do is get an invatiation from a hotel, hostel, any business like that. Lots of them offer visa invatations and registrations even if you are not going to be a guest there. But it can take up to 3 days, so you might have to spend a night or 2 at a cheap hotel while they register your shizznit. I think that might be what he is refering to.

Sorry, I've been absent as a result of technical problems - i.e. my phone line just stopped rabotaeting for some reason.
So today waxwing is brought to you from the rather charming internet cafe in Stavropol's main telephone office. Pretty good actually.
So, what was the question again?
Ah, visas.
Well, as you can see above, I'm talking about Russia. I don't know about Ukraine and I don't want to mislead you. In Russia, if you get a private visa from a friend, it can take absolutely ages to process and it'll be a real hassle for them. Very few people actually use that route as far as I know. On the other hand, if you want to stay for less than 1 month, the right thing to do is to get a tourist visa. You can get the invitation over the web from a variety of different companies, and then when you arrive you just have to go to their office and do the visa registration with them. Then you're free as a bird. Well nearly, I mean, you have to do the registration thing again if you go to another town, and also you should pre-declare your intention to visit all the towns you're going to - that part in particular annoys the **** out of me.

As well as tourist visas, there are student visas, business visas, transit visas and even diplomatic visas.
Student visas are absolutely great, apparently you can even work on one of those (not sure of details). But of course you'd have to book a course of study etc.

So, anyone got any relevant information? :lol:

Waxwing, you're a good man indeed! Thank you for your advice. I have about a year to fiddle about with this anyway, so we'll see what happens.

I have 7 months... I'll let you know what happens, pravit.

Thanks, my Washington comrade, you're a good man too.