Reviewed by Carlos Vargas, Texas Licensed Funeral Director (TFSC #119648) ·
Houston covers thirteen states and picks up for two and a half hours
The Consulate General of Russia in Houston publishes its consular district, and Texas is on it by name, alongside Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Thirteen states, one post. A Dallas family does not have to work out who covers it.
The post publishes its own particulars: 1333 West Loop South, Suite 1300, Houston, TX 77027, open Monday to Friday except Russian holidays. Two windows matter more than the address. Reception is nine until noon. The switchboard on (713) 337-3300 has its own calling hours, two until half past four, so the hours someone answers and the hours the counter is open do not overlap at all. There is a separate line on +1 (713) 213-84-84 that operates around the clock, and the page says plainly that it is for emergencies, not for appointments.
The same page lists eight desk addresses — notary, citizenship, passports, visas, appointments, detention and deportation, and the general box. None of them is a repatriation desk. The Texas Secretary of State lists the same Houston address and telephone for Russia in its own directory of consular offices in Texas.
The consulate says in writing that the apostille is enough
Most of these guides have to reason their way to whether a Texas apostille will be accepted. Russia answers it on its own website.
The consulate’s legalization page states that under the Hague Convention of October 5, 1961, to which both Russia and the United States are parties, documents bearing an apostille issued by a participating country are exempt from consular validation, and that documents with an apostille do not require any further legalization. It also names who issues one in this country: the office of the Secretary of State in each respective state. For a death certificate issued in Dallas, that is Austin.
The treaty record agrees. The HCCH status table shows the Russian Federation as a contracting party by succession recorded 4 September 1991, in force 31 May 1992. Texas issues what it calls a universal apostille certificate that serves as both authentication and apostille, and it charges fifteen dollars per document, expressly per document and not per page. Recordable documents must be under five years old, must not be notarised, and the request has to name the destination country.
The one class of paper an apostille does not reach
The same legalization page carries a carve-out that is easy to read past and expensive to miss. The Hague Convention, it says, does not apply to documents issued by diplomatic missions or consular offices, and does not apply to administrative documents bearing directly on commercial transactions or customs operations.
Read that against a repatriation file. A Texas death certificate takes an apostille, and so does a funeral director’s affidavit notarised in Dallas. But anything a consulate itself issues sits outside the convention, so it cannot be apostilled and its acceptance is a matter for whoever receives it. If a document in your file was issued by a consular office rather than by a county or a state, do not assume the Austin route applies to it, and ask the post what it wants instead.
Three steps, and the middle one is in Russian
The notary page sets out the chain for making a United States document valid in Russia, and it is three steps in this order: send the original for an apostille to the Secretary of State; translate the document and the apostille from English into Russian; notarise that translation, either with the Russian notary at the consulate or with a Russian notary inside Russia. The apostille itself gets translated, not just the certificate underneath it. The page adds that if you do not speak Russian but intend to use the document in Russia, the text should be in both English and Russian.
The same page lists eleven notarial acts a Russian consul abroad may perform, from authentication of copies and signatures to verification of translation and attestation of a will. We read all eleven. Not one of them is a transport permit, an authorisation to import remains, or anything else addressed to a death. The consulate can notarise your translated death certificate. Nothing published says it issues a document that moves a casket.
Booking has a wrinkle worth knowing before a bereaved family meets it. On the English appointment page, everything except a visa is booked through a button labelled only in Russian. The English text tells you to press it.
What is published about remains runs the wrong way
Here is the honest limit of this page.
The consular-services menu at Houston has five entries — notary, citizenship verification, registry information, documents from Russia on demand, and legalization. We opened all five. None is about repatriation, transport of remains or funerals, and no page under them names a fee in roubles or dollars. We did not find a Russian consular fee schedule at all. The only money notice the post publishes is an announcement dated 27 October 2025 that from 1 November 2025 American banking cards are accepted for consular services and fees, and money orders are not accepted.
There is a detailed official list for moving human remains, but it describes remains leaving Russia, not arriving. The United States Embassy in Moscow publishes that Russian authorities require, for an export, an official death certificate from the civil records office known as ZAGS, a certificate of encasement confirming the container is sealed and holds nothing extraneous, and a medical certificate from the Forensic Bureau confirming the absence of contagious disease; that remains leave in a zinc coffin, or an urn if cremated, inside a suitable transport box; and that there is no embalming requirement where burial is local. Every line of that is outbound. We will not reverse it into a Dallas checklist, because a reversed list is a guess wearing a citation.
| Published requirement | Direction it is written for |
|---|---|
| Apostille, then Russian translation, then notarisation | Into Russia — published by Houston |
| No consular legalization once apostilled | Into Russia — published by Houston |
| ZAGS certificate, encasement, Forensic Bureau letter | Out of Russia only |
| Zinc coffin or urn inside a transport box | Out of Russia only |
| Import permit, transport authorisation or fee | Not published in either direction |
Questions families ask about a return to Russia
- Which Russian consulate covers Dallas?
- Houston. The Consulate General publishes a consular district of thirteen states and Texas is named on it.
- Does a Dallas death certificate need Russian consular legalization?
- No. The consulate’s own legalization page states that a document bearing an apostille is exempt from consular validation and requires no further legalization. It still has to be translated into Russian and the translation notarised.
- What does the Russian consulate charge?
- We could not establish it. No fee schedule appears anywhere on the post’s site. The only payment notice says that since 1 November 2025 American bank cards are accepted and money orders are not.
Sources checked and case confirmation
Sources checked September 22, 2026 on the Houston consulate pages for its consular district, contacts, the full consular-services menu and each of its five entries, legalization, notarial services, appointments and the payment announcement; the Texas Secretary of State pages on authentication, on requesting a universal apostille and its directory entry for Russia; the HCCH status table for the Apostille Convention; and the United States Embassy in Moscow disposition-of-remains report. What this page deliberately does not claim: any Russian consular fee, because no schedule is published; what Russia requires for remains arriving from the United States, because no source we read states it and the outbound list is not reversed here; any position for Russia under the 1973 Strasbourg agreement or the 1937 Berlin arrangement; and anything about airlines, routes, air corridors, banking or payment channels, because no official source we read addresses them. No airline, route or crate specification is stated here. Contact Vargas-London with the region in Russia and where your relative is now, without sending medical or identity documents through the inquiry form.
