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First group of Iranian tourists arrives in Moscow under group visa-free travel agreement

The tourists were met by representatives of the Moscow City Committee for Tourism

MOSCOW, March 18. /TASS/. The first group of tourists from Tehran arrived in Moscow under the agreement on group visa-free travel between Russia and Iran. A plane carrying Iranian citizens landed at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport (VKO), according to a TASS reporter.

The tourists were met by representatives of the Moscow City Committee for Tourism, who presented them with welcome T-shirts with labels in Farsi.

One tourist, who called herself Mozhgan, noted that the group visa-free travel region is very convenient.

"It is very nice that there is no need to go through the entire application process and stand in queues," the tourist said. "We passed through the passport control easily."

"I believe that Russia is becoming one of the most popular tourist destinations in Iran these days," she noted.

Previously, head of the Moscow City Committee for Tourism’s department on cooperation with foreign authorities Natalya Molochkova notified TASS that the Middle East contributed to almost one quarter of the entire influx of tourists to Moscow from non-CIS countries in 2023, adding that interest in Russia has increased significantly in recent years.

In March, 2023, Minister of Economic Development of Russia Maxim Reshetnikov announced that Russia and Iran planned to implement the agreement on visa-free group tourist travel between the two countries that year. The agreement was inked on July 1, 2021, and allows visa-free entry for groups under 50 people for no more than 15 days. The Ministry of Economic Development announced that the group tourist exchange between Russia and Iran resumed on August 1. The first Iranian delegation arrived in Russia under this program in September last year at the Mineralnye Vody airport.

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