US journalist become first to be banned from Russia since Cold War Problems began when he returned to Russia to collect his correspondent's visa in November, when he was told that the invitation - a crucial document issued by the Foreign Ministry- had been delayed. "They said not to worry, there has been a delay, just stay a couple of days and we'll get to you, and don't worry about over staying the visa [he had been issued in order to enter the country," he said by telephone from London. "When I finally collected the invitation on the Tuesday I went to the FMS and was told I had overstayed my visa -because of a delay created by them," he explained. Familiar with the bureaucratic SNAFUs that are the bane of everyday life in Russia, Mr Satter says he took the refusal on the chin, paid a fine imposed by a Moscow court for overstaying his visa, and left the country to begin the process again - all with the blessing of the Foreign Ministry, which later contacted him to tell him a fresh invitation could be collected at the Russian Embassy in Kiev. But it was when he arrived to collect the document on December 23 that he realized something was seriously amiss. We were told they had the reference number that we had been given, but that there was no invitation under that number. The consular officer told me it was the first time he had seen it in his career," he said. We called the Foreign Ministry and asked what was going on, and they told be to come back and ask for a man called Alexy Gruby. When Mr Satter returned to the embassy on Christmas day, he says Mr Gruby read a prepared statement in Russian saying "the competent organs" - a Soviet-era euphemism for the security services - had decided that his presence in Russia was considered undesirable. "I don't accept this - not for a second," Mr Satter said. I am angered by the dishonest and undignified statements by the Foreign Ministry. The formulation is one normally used when expelling diplomats suspected of espionage, and, says Mr Satter, indicates that his expulsion had nothing to do with supposed visa violations. He also says that the original invitation was dated November 22 - suggesting that it was ready but for some reason deliberately held back when he first arrived to collect it. Mr Satter has by his own admission been critical of the Russian government in his reporting, but said he had not experienced any problems previously. Most controversially, in his 2004 book Darkness at Dawn he charged that a series of apartment block bombings that struck Russia in 1999 were an "inside job" meant to cement Vladimir Putin's position as Boris Yeltsin's successor and justify the second Chechen War. While Russia has been increasingly sensitive in the run-up to the Sochi Winter Olympics in February, it remained unclear on Tuesday whether Mr Satter had been barred for political or purely bureaucratic reasons. The Russian Foreign Ministry, which issues press accreditation to foreign journalists, initially declined to comment, saying that no country is obliged to explain its reasons for denying entry to a foreign national. But on Tuesday afternoon it issued a statement claiming that Mr Satter was guilty of a "gross violation" of immigration law by failing to immediately collect his multi-entry visa from the Federal Migration Service on his arrival in Moscow. Mr Satter arrived in Russia on November 21. According to current migration law, on receiving accreditation from the Foreign Ministry press centre he was obliged to immediately appear at the Moscow branch of the Federal Migration Service and receive a multi-entry visa," the ministry said. Despite this, Mr Satter appeared at the FMS only on November 26, where he was denied a multi-entry visa on the basis of gross violation of Russian migration law. From November 22 to 26 this US citizen was effectively in Russia illegally," the statement read. The ministry also said that a Moscow court approved the Federal Migration Service's application to bar Mr Satter from the country and fine him on November 29. A spokesperson for the US embassy in Moscow declined to comment on Tuesday, though Kevin Klose, the president of RFE/L, said on the organization's website that the embassy had been informed and had lodged a formal diplomatic protest. In September last year Rob Hornstra and Arnold Van Bruggen, two Dutch journalists who had spent years documenting the changes in Sochi in the run-up to the Winter Olympic Games that open on February 7, were also refused entry when they applied for new visas. In 2011 British reporter Luke Harding, then the Guardian's Moscow correspondent, was denied re-entry to Russia, becoming the first Western journalist to be expelled in the post-Soviet era. In 2008 Natalia Morar, a Moldovan journalist who had covered high-level corruption for the liberal Russian magazine the New Times, was refused re-entry to Russia despite being married to a Russian citizen. Mr Satter, who said he and Radio Free Europe only went public with the story after repeated attempts to solve the problem diplomatically failed, said he would continue to write about Russia and hopes one day to return.