I drove often pre-COVID and pre-sanctions, and after did it in August 2023 for my summer holidays.
- you have to buy a russian liability insurance ie. an OSAGO. You don´t have a MIR card, so you have to ask the insurance brooker for an alternative payment method, which will be for instance to the VISA/Mastercard of some fellow in Kazakhstan or anywhere. You will have to communicate in Russian. So do your homework on this would be pre-1) step.
Go there: https://greencard-sc.ru/
it will cost significantly more with a payment to a 3rd-part than directly in RUB.
- & 3) at the border they ask only for the card document, besides your passport.. But in order to be legit, ie. road control or in case you need to use the insurance, you must have the international driver's licence, and of course the mandatory OSAGO.
Russian border crossing is two-steps:. passport control and customs control.
With a vehicle, you drive into a lane, first kiosk or main building line for pedestrians, is where you do the passport control. This happened to me at Finland crossing before it was shut down by Finns, because there were too few cars, so they didn't anymore have the passport control by the lane.
There were queues of busses passengers. As a car driver you may short-cut the queue, ie, just walk ahead to the front. If told by the agents by the car lane, ask to be sure. If they say yes then you walk ahead to the front of the line inside the building and tell the agents and apologize to the person waiting the turn, that you will take.
I will cross at Luhaama sometime this summer, no idea how it is by now, if passport control inside or by the lane.
so after passport control, the other kiosk for customs.
You can download the form from Russian customs site, and print it A4 double sided. Double sided, this is required.
You need to fill to forms identical. One is kept by customs, the other will be stamped on exit and you keep it.
Here is the last I had in August. Finland was still open, I crossed at Torfyanovka on the way to Vyborg. I am permanent resident of Norway, norwegian card plate, citizen of couple EU countries, one of them France and in this case I was with my French passport:
as you can see the form is simple, but be careful, otherwise you start again. They have plenty of blank forms of course but you can print a bunch to have in the car.
I used to always fill in advance before the travel.
NB:
on the recto the fill about your address in Russia: it's pro-forma, mandatory but irrelevant, you can put whatever, on this form I put a street i actually know in SPb
on the verso, by the car registration data, you have to mention a value. In that case i put 1000 euro.
The reason is: the car is considered as "temporary import", ie. it's a transient good, no duties on it, so long it does exit with you, like it entered. But IF the car would not exit, then at the exit border it would be considered as a regular import, subjected to duties. That's why a value is required. But then no actual value. So you put whatever you want.
the car registered in these forms. In a small village on Podporozhe raïon near Svir river, edge of Leningradskaya by Vologdoskaya, near Onego, on the way to Vytegra:
entering Belozersk:
in downtown SPb, near Griboedova channel:
btw in SPb now most downtown is parking regulated, paying by daytime. So it's convenient to have the app and of course mean of payment : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ru.spb.parking