A resident of St. Petersburg filed a lawsuit against the United States due to a delay in visa extension.

Ilya Mikhailov, a resident of St. Petersburg, filed a lawsuit against the United States for over 8 million rubles due to a delay in issuing a visa, which led to the bankruptcy of his American company. This was announced on March 25 by Daria Lebedeva, head of the joint press service of the city courts.

According to Mikhailov, in 2016 he founded a transportation company in the United States and received a visa valid until July 2017.

"Ilya transferred $95 thousand to the account of the established company. From 2016 to 2019, the plaintiff's company twice petitioned for an extension of the work visa and twice received approval from the Citizenship and Immigration Service," Lebedeva wrote on the Telegram channel.

She also added that in September 2019, Mikhailov again applied to the US Embassy in Moscow to extend his visa. In December of the same year, his passport was returned to him without a visa. In addition, in 2020, he was asked to pay "antifraud" in the amount of $500. He was granted a visa only in November, Lebedeva added.

However, since the American embassy considered Mikhailov's application for 441 days, his company went bankrupt. The head of the joint press service of the courts said that Mikhailov estimated the damage caused at more than 8 million rubles.

On April 23, 2023, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, stated that the American side refused to issue visas to journalists from the Russian Federation. According to her, "manipulation of the topic of freedom of speech and the rights of journalists is obvious."