The family of a Russian man who drowned in a reservoir in the United States will face difficulties in recovering his body because the State Department has practically suspended the issuance of all visas, Russian Consul General in Houston Alexander Pisarev told Sputnik on Thursday.
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 31st August, 2018) The family of a Russian man who drowned in a reservoir in the United States will face difficulties in recovering his body because the State Department has practically suspended the issuance of all visas, Russian Consul General in Houston Alexander Pisarev told Sputnik on Thursday.
On Wednesday, a 20-year-old Russian man, Aleksandr Kurganov, drowned in a reservoir along the Utah-Arizona border.
"It will be very difficult for Kurganov's family to recover his body in the United States because US authorities practically stopped granting visas to Russians including in urgent humanitarian cases," Pisarev said.
Pisarev added that Russian diplomats have already contacted Kurganov's relatives but the issue of their arrival into the United States has not been resolved yet.
The consulate general said that the body of the Russian man could be sent to his home city of St. Petersburg without his family's presence.
The next steps will be handled by a US insurance company because Kurganov had life insurance. The company would likely repatriate the body or perform cremation, Pisarev added.
The US move to limit its visa services in Russia was prompted by Moscow's scaling down the diplomatic presence of the US mission in Russia from 755 people to 455, the same number of diplomatic personnel Russia had in the United States after the 2016 expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats over alleged US election meddling which Moscow denied.
