Turchak asked Mishustin to renew the passports of the special operation participants

Participants in a special military operation in Ukraine may be spared the need to change their passport within 90 days upon reaching 20 and 45 years of age. A letter with a corresponding request was sent to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin by the secretary of the General Council of United Russia and the head of the working group on special operations, Andrei Turchak (Vedomosti has the letter). Members of the group propose to extend the validity of such passports until the end of military service. “It often happens that fighters on the front line have expired or are about to expire. There is no way to change it in the prescribed manner. But there is a real chance of getting a fine for untimely replacement (from 2000-3000 rubles to 5000 for Muscovites and St. Petersburg residents),” – reported Turchak in his Telegram channel.

The need to change a passport within 90 days is established by the regulations on the passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation from 1997, approved by government decree. At the same time, the same document provides that for military personnel undergoing conscription military service, passports are issued or replaced at the end of the established period of conscription military service. For other categories of military personnel, no such rule is provided, and issuing a new passport within the required time frame under the conditions of a special operation, writes Turchak, is not possible. “The inability to replace a passport within the prescribed period leads not only to everyday problems, in particular when interacting with credit institutions, but is also the basis for applying administrative measures to such citizens,” Turchak noted in the letter.

He also cited as an example the existing practice of automatically extending the validity of certain documents. For example, a decree of 2022 extended for three years the validity of Russian national driver’s licenses, the validity of which expires between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2023. This measure was taken in connection with the coronavirus pandemic, in order to avoid queues. Today, a similar decision is needed regarding the passports of participants in the special operation, he explained in the letter to Mishustin.

The 90-day period also appeared in the law during the pandemic; amendments were made by the government in July 2021. Previously, when a citizen turned 20 or 45 years old, he must immediately change his passport, since the document automatically becomes invalid. During the period of obtaining a new passport, which takes from 10 to 30 days, the citizen was issued a temporary identity card. With such a document, he could not apply for a loan from a bank or register on the government services portal, the government noted then. Now the old passport is valid for 90 days.