TheRussian passport (Russian:Заграничный паспорт гражданина Российской Федерации,romanized: Zagranichnyy pasport grazhdanina Rossiyskoy Federatsii,lit.'Transborder passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation') is abiometrictravel document issued by theMinistry of Internal Affairs toRussian citizens for international travel. This external Russian passport is distinct from theinternal Russian passport, which is a mandatoryidentity document for travel and identification purposes within Russia. Russian citizens must use their Russian passports when leaving or enteringRussia, unless traveling to/from a country where theRussian internal ID is recognised as a valid travel document.
After thedissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, theSoviet Union passport continued to be issued until 1997 with a validity of 5 years, when the first modern Russian passport is known to be issued. The first version of passports issued in 1997 was handwritten. Passports issued from 2000 to 2010 weremachine-readable passports, had a validity of 5 years and included 36 pages. In 2006, Russia issued the first machine-readablebiometric passports and in 2010, the design of the biometric passports was modified to include 46 pages and have a validity of 10 years.[1]
Citizens under 18 traveling without either of their parents must have written consent of both parents allowing their departure from the country. When a child travels with one parent, consent of another parent is not required. Articles 20 and 21 of the Federal Law "On the entry in the Russian Federation and departure from the Russian Federation" govern onlydeparture from Russia and have nothing to do with the requirements of other countries regardingentry to these countries.
In addition to regular passports there are two special-purpose types of passports for travelling abroad: diplomatic passports and service passports (issued to government employees abroad on official business).
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Foreigners arriving in Russia were met with various restrictions during theTsarist period; border magistrates would allow foreigners to pass within the state only with the permission of the senior government. UnderPeter I, internal migration increased and as a result, the state introduced documents that travelers were required to keep so that they could track the movement of people and goods throughout the empire.[2] The introduction of these documents also had a lot to do with the state's ability to impose properconscription andhead tax measures.
Under the legislation in force for the period of 1906 in Russia in the place of residence, as a general rule, the passport was not required. The capital and other cities which declared an emergency situation or enhanced protection were the exception. In addition, in areas that were subject to the rules on the supervision of industrial establishments, the workers of factories and plants were required to have a passport, and in the place of permanent residence. A passport was not needed when absent from the place of permanent residence: 1) within the district and outside it as recently as 50 vents and no more than 6 months, and 2) from the persons hired for rural work, – in addition, within the townships adjacent to the county of residence, even if more than 6 months.
Law of June 10, 1902 the regulations on residence permits June 3, 1894 extended to the provinces of the Kingdom of Poland, with some modifications. Formed in 1902, the committee on the needs of the agricultural industry is recognized as desirable in the types of facilitating the movement of agricultural workers, the simplification of passport regulations. A special meeting of the needs of the agricultural industry has been entrusted to theMinister of Internal Affairs of the revision of statutes on residence permits, in the sense of saving for a passport solely value of an identity document. Elaborated on these grounds in 1905, a new draft statute was a passport to postpone consideration until the convocation of theState Duma.
Immediately after theRussian Revolution the Russian Republic not followed the emigration; Many disagreed with the new regime left the country since 1917 to the end of the 1920s left the country about 8,000 people, including about 500 scientists (for comparison, in the period from 1989 to 2004, according to various estimates from 25,000 to 80,000 scientists left Russia[3]). In 1922, two flights so-called philosophical ship from Petrograd toStettin and several ships from the territory of Ukraine and trains from Moscow on the personal instructions of Lenin were expelled 225 intellectuals (philosophersBerdyaev,Ilyin,Frank and Bulgakov). Of the emigrants only a small part returned, such asMarina Tsvetaeva andAlexei Tolstoy.
By the mid-1930s the Soviet government sealed the borders. Traveling to capitalist countries was only possible to employees of theForeign Ministry, thenomenklatura and selected artists while most ordinary Soviet citizens had the opportunity to travel only in socialist countries with trade union tours.
The third and final wave of Soviet emigration coincided with the rupture of relations with Israel. June 10, 1968 theCentral Committee received a joint letter to the leadership of the Foreign Ministry and the KGB signed byAndrey Gromyko andYuri Andropov to the proposal to allowSoviet Jews to emigrate from the country. As a result, in the 1970s only about 4,000 people had left, many against their will, for example, such well-known dissidents as Brodsky, Aksenov, Aleshkovsky, Voinovich, Dovlatov, Gorenstein, Galich.
On May 20, 1991, a few months before thecollapse of the USSR, the last Soviet law on the exit of citizens abroad was adopted, according to which citizens could leave at the request of the state, public and religious organisations and enterprises.
In 1993,exit visas were canceled and free issuing of passports was allowed. The right to freely leave the country was enshrined in a 1996 law.[4]Soviet passports with thesymbols of the Soviet Union were issued to citizens of the Russian Federation until the end of 1997, to be replaced by machine-readable Russian passports. The last Soviet passports issued had an expiration date at the end of 2002, about 10 years after the dissolution of the Soviet state. Since 2001, Russian passports have been issued with a design which includes theemblem of Russia, adouble-headed eagle. Since 2010, the application for the registration of a passport can be submitted via theGosuslugi website.
In 2006,biometric passports were introduced in Russia. Since 2009, in allregions of Russia there are points of issue of passport and visa documents of new generation (passports containing electronic media). The data of these items come in a single personalisation center. After 1 March 2010, biometric passport are valid for 10 years. The data on the chip Russian passports are protected by a technology access control BAC (basic access control), which allows producing read data only after entering the passport number, date of birth of the holder and the expiration date of the passport (usually by means of recognition of the machine readable zone of the passport), which excludes unauthorised access to data on the chip.
The holders of Russian Federation passports issued in Crimea and Sevastopol after their 2014 annexation, territory that is internationally recognized as a foreign-occupied part of Ukraine, do not have their passports recognized by the United States,[5] and are denied European Schengen-zone visas[6] (although Crimean residents who hold Ukrainian biometric passports can visit the EU visa-free).[6] Canada[7] and the United States[5] are also refusing to recognize passports that Russia started issuing in 2019 to Ukrainians in the non-government-controlled parts of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, and the European Union was considering their non-recognition.[8][better source needed] Authorities in the Russian-occupied city ofKherson in southern Ukraine have handed out Russian passports to local residents during2022 invasion.[9]
Data page and signature page of a biometric international passport (2014)Data page and signature page of a non-biometric international passport (2007)
Each passport has a data page and a signature page. A data page has a visual zone and amachine-readable zone. The visual zone has a digitized photograph of the passport holder, data about the passport, and data about the passport owner:
A facsimile of the owner's signature, scanned from the application form
At the bottom of the data page is a machine-readable zone, which can be read both visually and by an optical scanner. The machine-readable zone consists of two lines. There are no blank spaces in either line. A space which does not contain a letter or a number is filled with "<".
The first line of the machine-readable zone contains a letter to denote the type of travel document ("P" for passport), the code for the issuing country ("RUS" for "Russian Federation"), and the name (surname first, then given names) of the passport holder.
The second line of the machine-readable zone contains the passport number (supplemented by a check digit), the code of the citizenship of the passport holder ("RUS" for "Russian Federation"), the date of birth of the passport holder (supplemented by a check digit), a notation of the sex/gender of the passport owner ("M" or "F"), the date of expiration of the passport (supplemented by a check digit), and, at the very end of the line, one or more overall check digits.
A signature page has a line for the signature of a passport holder. A passport is not valid unless it is signed by the passport owner (except for passport owners under age of 14).
Due to the fact that Russian visas (and Russian internal passports since 2011) are intended for use in Russia only, there are certain other Latin letters as well as other alphanumerical symbols used to transliterate the letter with no direct analogue in Latin script into the machine-readable zone. As an example, the letter "ч" is usually transcribed as "ch" in Russian travel documents, however, Russian visas and internal passports use "3" in the machine-readable zone instead. Another example is "Alexei" (travel passport) => "Алексей" (Cyrillic version) => "ALEKSEQ" (machine-readable version in an internal document)
Romanization of Russian — Standards for International Travel Passports and Other Popular Cases[11]
Cover of the Russian diplomatice-passportCover of the Russian service e-passport
Regular (red cover)
Issuable to all citizens of theRussian Federation. Period of validity is 10 years from the date of issue for biometric passports and 5 years for non-biometric passports.
Diplomatic (green cover)
Issuable toRussian diplomats accredited overseas and their eligible dependents, and to citizens who reside in the Russian Federation and travel abroad for diplomatic work. Passport issued for the period of work, but no more than 10 years.
Service (blue cover)
Issuable to Russian federal and regionalcivil servants assigned overseas, their eligible dependents, to members of the Russian parliament who travel abroad on official business and to judges of the Supreme and Constitutional Courts. Also issued to military personnel when deployed overseas. Period of validity: length of service, but not to exceed 10 years.
Certificate for return
Issuable to Russian citizens and nationals overseas, in urgent circumstances. This document is valid only for return to the Russian Federation.
Russia's law allows its citizens to legally hold two valid external passports at the same time.[12][13]
The passport is held at the consulate during the processing of visas. A citizen who holds a second passport may not expect to obtain a visa for other trips or to apply for other visas. This method only works in some cases: for example, when applying for a Schengen visa in the Russian Federation, all valid passports are required, not just one. The reason for this is the need to be in the country at the time of visa issuance. The possibility of using this method should be clarified in advance.
Several countries have a negative attitude towards travellers visiting countries unfriendly to the country of entry, up to and including refusal of entry (for example, a citizen may be refused entry to Iran if his passport contains a mark of a visit to Israel.[14] Having a second passport, one can try to conceal the fact of such visits from the immigration officials. The feature of the second passport is that it can only be a biometric one. Such a passport is issued for a separate validity period of 10 years (regardless of the expiry date of the first passport).
Russian passports do not have a passport message. Passports of most countries of the world contain a special message, usually given in several languages, called a passport message.[15] The message is addressed to representatives of foreign governments. In this message, the issuing state requests that the passport bearer be allowed unhindered passage, travel and necessary assistance.[16]
Visa requirements forRussian citizens are administrative entry restrictions by the authorities of other countries placed on citizens ofRussia. As of 2025, Russian citizens had visa-free or visa on arrival access to 114 countries and territories, ranking the Russian passport 43th in terms of travel freedom (tied with Turkey passport) according to theHenley Passport index.[17]
The Russian passport along with theTurkish passport are the highest ranking passports whose holders are still required visas for their travels to the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada.
^Total number includes tourists, business travelers, students, exchange visitors, temporary workers and families, diplomats and other representatives and all other classes of nonimmigrant admissions (I-94).
According to the federal law and the orders from 2012 and 2014 for the old 5-year laminated and the new 10-year biometric passport, respectively, either document has to be issued within one to four months,[134][135][136]depending on circumstances, with the issue time being three months in case of an application being made to a consulate outside of Russia.
However, in practice, some consulates require an appointment to be made prior to the applicant being able to provide documents to apply for the passport, in some cases, appointments can only be available many months or even possibly years into the future, effectively undoing the upper limit for a timely issuance of the travel document.
Additionally, if passports are expired or lost, applications for the new passport are routinely declined to be accepted when abroad, prior to the verification of citizenship,[citation needed] for which the consuls require a separate application to be made,[citation needed] either in person or notarised by anotary public, with the processing times for verification itself often exceeding many months. Such practice of causing the extra costs for the applicant, however, seems to be in violation of point 23 of orders 10303 from 2012-06-28 and 3744 from 2014-03-19, which guarantee that no extra services are required in order to apply for a passport.[137]
^"Archived copy"(PDF).Archived(PDF) from the original on 3 February 2018. Retrieved3 February 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^Canada, Government of Canada, Statistics."CANSIM by Subject".www5.statcan.gc.ca. Archived fromthe original on 29 May 2018. Retrieved8 April 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
^Statistică, Biroul Naţional de (12 February 2018)."// Comunicate de presă".www.statistica.md.Archived from the original on 18 June 2018. Retrieved17 June 2018.
^"Archived copy"(PDF).Archived(PDF) from the original on 28 January 2018. Retrieved28 January 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^"Archived copy"(PDF).Archived(PDF) from the original on 22 November 2017. Retrieved14 October 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^"О порядке выезда из Российской Федерации и въезда в Российскую Федерацию".Federal Migration Service (Russia).Archived from the original on 20 March 2015. Retrieved13 April 2015.Срок оформления паспорта дипломатическим представительством или консульским учреждением Российской Федерации не должен превышать три месяца со дня подачи заявления о выдаче паспорта, за исключением случаев подачи заявления о выдаче паспорта в форме электронного документа с использованием информационно-телекоммуникационных сетей общего пользования, в том числе сети Интернет, включая единый портал государственных и муниципальных услуг.
^"ПРИКАЗ от 19 марта 2014 г. N 3744".Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Russia).Archived from the original on 30 March 2015. Retrieved11 April 2015.15. Срок оформления паспорта либо уведомления об отказе со дня подачи заявления не должен превышать: - один месяц - в случае подачи заявления по месту жительства; - четыре месяца - в случае подачи заявления по месту пребывания; - три месяца - в случае подачи заявления в загранучреждение; - три месяца - в случае подачи заявления заявителем, имеющим (имевшим) допуск к сведениям особой важности или совершенно секретным сведениям, отнесенным к государственной тайне в соответствии с Законом Российской Федерации от 21 июля 1993 г. N 5485-1 "О государственной тайне" <1> (далее - Закон Российской Федерации о государственной тайне).
^"ПРИКАЗ от 28 июня 2012 г. N 10303".Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Russia).Archived from the original on 3 March 2015. Retrieved11 April 2015.15. В соответствии требованиями статьи 10 Федерального закона паспорт выдается сроком на 5 лет. Срок оформления паспорта либо уведомления об отказе со дня подачи заявления не должен превышать: - один месяц - в случае подачи заявления по месту жительства; - четыре месяца - в случае подачи заявления по месту пребывания; - три месяца - в случае подачи заявления в загранучреждение; - три месяца - в случае подачи заявления заявителем, имеющим (имевшим) допуск к сведениям особой важности…
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