The US continues breaching its obligations as a host nation to national UN missions, this time by obliging the administrative and technical personnel of the Russian Permanent Mission to the UN to obtain driver’s licenses through the state authorities, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.
“In addition to the already routine practice of denying visas to Russian diplomats travelling for long and short-term business trips to the Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, as well as revoking visas, another irritant has recently emerged. Since January 2019, the Americans introduced a new procedure for obtaining driver’s licenses and registering personal vehicles of the permanent mission’s administrative and technical personnel. Now driver’s licenses for these individuals will be issued not by the State Department’s Office of Foreign Missions, but by the state authorities,” the ministry’s Department of Information and Press said in a statement.
The procedure thereby will be common for both ordinary local residents and administrative and technical workers. To obtain driver’s licenses, the mission’s employees will most likely be required to pass a multi-stage exam and pay a state fee, according to the ministry.