Visa Due, Passport expiring!

[Wanderer]

Help me get my head around this......

GF has Student visa expires 31st Oct 2008 and her Russian Travelling Passport expires 30th Dec 2008. We want to apply for PSW visa, she has her results (A First!) but also we want to go to Russia over both Xmas's and New Years (UK and Russian).

Russian Embassy in London say three months to process passport in the typical Russian cant-be-arsed way, and I estimate three weeks for the PSW visa if approved.

We won't have time to apply for a new passport in russia, although we got the previous one in two weeks 'po blatu' ie via 'contacts' which we no longer have....

We don't know if the Russian Embassy needs to keep the old passport for three months too, gf is finding out today. If so we are buggered.

So, Plan A is to apply for new passport now, hopefully able to retain old passport, and apply for PSW on old passport but now it's just occurred to me will they allow that with only a few months validity on the passport. Arrghhh.

I'm off to download the PSW visa application forms, hopefully some bright spark here can help us thing through this when I get back, byeeeee