Putin signed a law specifying restrictions on the travel of Russians abroad

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on restrictions on travel abroad for certain categories of citizens, as well as clarifying the rules on recognizing Russian passports as invalid. In particular, document involves the seizure of foreign passports from citizens called up in the Russian Federation for military service.

The law expands the grounds for recognizing a passport as invalid: its loss, termination of citizenship, unsuitability of the document, non-return at the end of a business trip, death, the fact of the absence of a passport or its non-receipt, non-transfer of a passport without a good reason by a citizen of the Russian Federation, whose right to leave Russia is limited on the grounds, provided by law, for storage in an authorized body or organization, issuance of a passport on a lost (stolen) form, etc.

In addition, according to the law, a person who is subject to conscription for military service and who has received a summons from the military registration and enlistment office must, within five working days after receiving a decision to restrict exit from Russia, deposit a foreign passport with the agency that issued it – the migration department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs or the MFC. The document will be kept until the expiration of the travel restrictions or until the expiration of the passport.

The initiative was submitted to the State Duma by the government of the Russian Federation on August 12, 2021. As noted in the accompanying documents, it will “eliminate legal uncertainty due to the absence at the legislative level of grounds for the invalidity of a passport, which will remove corruption risks and exclude the possibility of abuse by officials.”

Alexander Kislov