Ukraine Launches Electronic Visa System.
The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine has launched an electronic visa service, on April 4, which will be beneficial to 46 countries around the world.
Citizens of all eligible countries will be able to obtain travel authorization online, from anywhere in the world. The application takes just a few minutes to fulfill and the processing might take up to 9 days. There’s a $65 fee, which shall be paid with a bank card. Such travel authorization also gives the right to its holder to stay in Ukraine for 30 days. The authorization is single-entry, and its holder must have it printed when he/she shows up at the border check to enter Ukraine.
According to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, these ongoing reforms will bring Ukraine closer to the world.
“Today, we launch the Electronic Visa Service. The citizens of 46 countries can now apply for a visa to Ukraine without leaving home,” Minister Klimkin wrote on Twitter, among others.
Klimkin has also announced through Twitter, the first person who obtained a Ukrainian e-visa, who is a Thai national.
“The system of visa issuance works – we just issued the first Ukrainian e-visa to a Thai citizen. We’re going to the fully operative mode,” he wrote.
The nationals of the following countries are eligible to apply for e-visas:
- Australia
- Antigua and Barbuda
- the Commonwealth of the Bahamas
- Barbados
- Bahrain
- Bolivia
- Bhutan
- Vanuatu
- Haiti
- Guatemala
- Honduras
- Greenland
- Dominica
- Dominican Republic
- Indonesia
- Cambodia
- Qatar
- Costa Rica
- Kuwait
- Laos
- Mauritius
- Malaysia
- Maldives
- Mexico
- Micronesia
- Myanmar
- Nepal
- Nicaragua
- New Zealand
- Oman
- Palau
- Peru
- El Salvador
- Samoa
- Saudi Arabia
- Seychelles
- Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
- Saint Lucia
- Singapore
- Suriname
- Thailand
- Timor-Leste
- Trinidad and Tobago
- Tuvalu
- Fiji
- Jamaica
Ukraine is Europe’s largest country, excluding Russia, and it used to attract more than 20 million foreign visitors per year, however, this number has significantly dropped in recent years. The Electronic Visa System is another attempt by the government to recuperate tourism.
The Ukraine electronic visa system has been established as a result of the collaboration between the Ukrainian government, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, Oschadbank JSC, and the Institute of Software Systems of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
