Russian passport

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Russian passport (also known as internal passport) is issued to every Russian citizen after the age of 14 by the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, and it is the primary identification document issued in the Russian Federation. It expires by the age of 20 and 45 and has to be renewed. Every citizen after the age of 14 is required to have a valid internal passport.

The passport contains the information about the full name of the citizen, his/her sex, birth date and birthplace and a picture of him/her. Also it contains remarks about his/her home address, military duty, marriage, children under 14, other internal and foreign passports issued by the Russian authorities, blood group (voluntarily) and individual taxpayer identification number (also voluntarily). All the data are filled in Russian. Any other remarks render it invalid.

Russian passport serves as an identifying document only within Russia. To go abroad, Russian adults need the international passport issued by Russian authorities (in Russian: заграничный паспорт), which is valid only for 5 years and is not granted by default, diplomatic passport, service passport or seaman's passport. A citizen can be denied the right to depart from Russia and hence the foreign passport if (s)he had access to a state secret, has been conscripted to the military or alternative civil service, detained as a suspect for a crime, is under investigation or serves his/her term according to a court decision, disobeys obligations imposed by a court decision, or have provided a false information applying to the passport. Children under 18 can only go abroad by consent of both parents.