Poland has announced plans to open fourteen extra visa centres in Ukraine, in order to cope with the vast numbers of Ukrainian nationals seeking to enter the country.
The Embassy of Poland will open additional 14 visa centers in Ukraine to process visa applications, Polish Ambassador to Ukraine Henryk Litwin has said.
"The opening of the visa centers is a step connected with our policy aimed at the liberalization of the visa regime," he said.
"We would like to facilitate this difficult procedure – the visa problem – for Ukrainians," he added.
According to Litwin, in 2010, 55% of all Schengen Visas issued by Poland were received by Ukrainians. Over the first ten months of the current year the Polish Embassy issued the same number of visas as in the whole of 2010.
In turn, Head of the Consular Section at the Embassy of the Republic of Poland Rafal Wolski said that in 2010 the embassy issued 452,000 visas to Ukrainians. As of the end of October 2011, the embassy has issued 467,000 visas and expects to issue over 500,000 visas in Ukraine by the end of the year.
Wolski informed that in November 2011 it is planned to open the two first visa centers: on November 12 in Ivano-Frankivsk and on November 18 in Lviv. He explained that first visa centers would open in western Ukraine, as the most interest in visiting Poland is seen there.
He also said that the Polish Embassy is cooperates with VFS Global, which is also planning to open a number of centers in Ukraine by the end of the year, in particular, on December 16 in Ternopil, December 22 in Rivne, and on December 27 in Lutsk.
In addition, in January 2012 it is planned to open three more visa centers: in Dnipropetrovsk and Donetsk on January 20 and in Kharkiv on January 27.
More visa centers will open in Kyiv on February 10 and in Odesa, Khmelnytsky, Zhytomyr, Vinnytsia, Sevastopol, and Simferopol in March 2012.
Wolski said that all the visa centers will work permanently and their opening is not connected directly with the upcoming Euro 2012 European Football Championship, but that Poland decided to open the visa centers before the sports event so as to facilitate the procedure of receiving visas.
In addition, VFS Global representative Srinarayan Sankaran informed that all the visa centers would work from Monday through Friday from 0830 until 1200 and from 1230 until 1530.
He also said that the service fee would amount to UAH 225. Applications will be considered within four to five days.
