Bureaucracy Steps Between Newlyweds Spent Valentine’s Day In Russia

Luke Lutovsky got to spend Valentine’s Day with his wife.

That might not seem unusual on its face, but the Mount Vernon man’s wife, Alexandra Kulikova, was deported to her native Russia when they returned from their honeymoon about six months ago.

Lutovsky, 23, is visiting her in Khabarovsk, Russia, this month.

“We got married for better or for worse,” Lutovsky said in a telephone interview with the Skagit Valley Herald from his mother-in-law’s cramped apartment in the Russian Far East.

“We’re just getting some of the worse before we get the better.”

Lutovsky is scheduled to return home March 2, most likely without Kulikova. He said it’s been maddening trying to get answers from the U.S. bureaucracy that separated them in the first place.

Kulikova, 19, was attending Skagit Valley College and working in a department store when the couple met, fell in love and married. They traveled to Los Cabos, Mexico, for their honeymoon.

But when they returned to the United States in Los Angeles, they were separated by agents of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

It turns out Kulikova’s student visa didn’t allow her to re-enter the country once she left.

After a week in jail, she was sent back to Khabarovsk, near the Russian-Chinese border.

Lutovsky’s mother, Robin Brown, said Sen. Slade Gorton and Rep. Jack Metcalf, both R-Wash., have helped.

“The news media caused me to get an awful lot of phone calls from people who are upset about this,” said Fairalee Markusen, a caseworker in Metcalf’s Bellingham office.

With prodding from Markusen, the INS agreed to speed up the case.

Kulikova’s paperwork is headed for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, she said. Once Kulikova receives it, she can apply for a visa through the embassy.