Good news for Indians: You may get to travel to Russia visa-free by 2025

Indians can now travel to Russia without a Visa by 2025. India and Russia have planned to ease travel norms by spring of 2025, the Economic Times (ET) reported on Monday.
This move aims to increase the number of tourists travelling from India to Russia. 
“It is predicted that thanks to the agreement, which is now under development, the number of travellers from India coming to the Russian capital will significantly increase,” the report said, quoting Evgeny Kozlov, chairman of the Moscow City Tourism Committee.
Russia and India held consultations on a bilateral agreement regarding visa restrictions in June and planned to introduce visa-free group tourist exchanges collectively, newswire PTI reported in May.
From August 1, 2023 onwards, Indians travelling to Russia can avail e-visa, which takes nearly four days to get issued.
In 2023, India was among the top five countries with the maximum number of e-visas issued. 9,500 e-visas were issued to travellers from India, which is 6 per cent of the total e-visas issued by Russia, the ET report said citing Kozlov.
Indians mostly travel to Russia for work-related and business purposes.
“In 2023, India entered the list of leaders in terms of number of travellers coming to Moscow among non-CIS countries. Over the entire year, more than 60,000 travellers from India visited the Russian capital, which also exceeded the figures for 2022 by 26%,” the report quoted Kozlov as saying. 
In the first quarter of 2024, India ranked third among the non CIS-countries for business tourists, the report said. In January 2024, Indian travellers were issued nearly 1700 e-visas, it added.
Presently, travellers from China and Iran are allowed to enter Russia without a visa through the visa-free tourist exchange programme. Russia aims to repeat the success of the visa-free tourist programme with India too, PTI reported. Russia launched the tourist exchange programme for China and Russia on August 1, 2023.