How to call Russia and other countries of former Soviet Union - Basic information

Important: Area code for Moscow has been changed to 495. The old code (095) will no longer work after February 1, 2006. Why did they change it?

Basic Information

You can make international calls either by dialing directly from your phone, or by using a prepaid calling card. The former is more convenient, usually better line quality, but more expensive. You should call your long distance carrier first to check the rates. If you don't subscribe to any international calling plan with them, the rates to CIS may be very high ($1 per minute and higher). Most long distance companies offer international calling plans, where you pay a fee of $3 to $5 per month and get a decent rate to selected countries (20-50 cents per minute). Your long distance company will have details on that.

Using prepaid calling cards is usually cheaper, but you have to dial a bunch of extra numbers, plus line quality will be lower. If you can program your phone to dial those numbers for you, and you can sacrifice a little bit of sound quality, use the cards, and you can get unbelievable rates as low as 2.9 cents per minute to Moscow. Also, the calling cards are very convenient with mobile phones. You can easily program your mobile phone to dial the access codes, and get those uncredibly low rates (plus airtime, of course) right from your mobile.

Now, how to dial. If you are new to calling Russia or other countries of former USSR, you may feel a bit frustrated at first. Compared to logical and simple system adopted in the US (3 digit area code + 7 digit number), their system of telephone codes may seem very complicated, with variable lenght of area code (3 to 5 digits) and the number itself (5 to 7 digits). There is a reason for that. If you want to know the reason, see Detailed Information.

If you are calling direct from your phone, first you need to dial certain code to get the international line. In the US it is "011". From most mobile phones it is "+" (the "plus" character). In Europe it's "+" or "00".

Then, dial the country code. For Russia it's "7". For Ukraine it's "380". For Belarus it's "375". For other countries, see the Detailed Information.

Next, dial the area (city) code. Here is the list of most popular ones:

• Moscow, Russia: 495
• St. Petersburg, Russia: 812
• Novosibirsk, Russia: 383
• Kazan, Russia: 843
• Yekaterinburg, Russia: 343
• Naberezhnye Chelny , Russia: 8439
• Volgograd, Russia: 844
• Kiev, Ukraine: 44
• Kharkiv, Ukraine: 572
• Odessa, Ukraine: 482
• Donetsk, Ukraine: 622
• Minsk, Belarus: 17

See the codes for the rest of the cities in Detailed Information

Finally, dial her local number. Make sure the sum of all digits you dial, starting with country code, is 11 for Russia, and 12 for Belarus and Ukraine.

If you are using a prepaid calling card, follow the instructions on the card, and when the prompt says: "Enter the number you wish to dial", or something like that, enter the sequence described above.

Note, that when you receive the lady's phone number, it may or may not contain the area code and country code.

Because of sheer complexity of the system, we let the ladies or their agents fill out their phone numbers with area and country codes to the best of their knowledge. So, if the phone number does not work if you dial it exactly how you received it, try to figure it out by matching area code, country code, etc., per these instructions and Detailed Information

There is one final tricky part here. We have corrected this issue in almost all of our numbers, but you may run into this, if you had gotten a phone number from some other agency. In the countries of former Soviet Union, to get long distance line, one dials "8" before the area code. It's much like dialing "1" in the US. So, some of the ladies put an "8", or "+8" in front of their number, as if it were a country code. However, the country code for Russia is "7". So if you see a digit "8" in front of the phone number provided, and it is not part of the area code, then replace it with "7". Again, make sure that the sum of all digits you dial, starting with country code, is 11 for Russia and 12 for Belarus and Ukraine. If it less than 11 (which is a very rare occasion), your recepient may have one of the older numbers, which are being updated now. In this case you may have to enter additional "2"s or "0" between the area code and the number, to make the total of 11 or 12 digits. Please see Detailed Information for details on that. You may have to try dialing it different ways before you figure out the correct way. Please get a paper and pencil and write down the dial sequence variations as you dial them. Memory could be a tricky thing with long numbers, writing them down helps a lot.

Now, let's review the dialing rules, using the examples for the most popular cities. In those examples, the X's represent single digits of the local subsriber's number. The dialing sequences are for dialing from US and Canada. Our Australian, European, and other customers should replace the "011" with the code adopted in their countries.

• Moscow, Russia: Dial 011-7-495-XXXXXXX
• St. Petersburg, Russia: Dial 011-7-812-XXXXXXX
• Novosibirsk, Russia: Dial 011-7-383-XXXXXXX
• Kazan, Russia: Dial 011-7-843-XXXXXXX
• Yekaterinburg, Russia: Dial 011-7-343-XXXXXXX
• Naberezhnye Chelny , Russia: Dial 011-7-8439-XXXXXX
• Volgograd, Russia: Dial 011-7-844-XXXXXXX
• Kiev, Ukraine: Dial 011-380-44-XXXXXXX
• Kharkiv, Ukraine: Dial 011-380-572-XXXXXX
• Odessa, Ukraine: Dial 011-380-482-XXXXXX
• Donetsk, Ukraine: Dial 011-380-622-XXXXXX
• Minsk, Belarus: Dial 011-375-17-XXXXXXX

On the final note, please make sure you are calculating time difference right. Double check that you are not calling her in the middle of the night. We've had our ladies complain that they get unexpected calls from USA at 3 or 4 AM. This is one of the reasons some ladies choose not to list their number in our catalogue.