Issuance of foreign travel passports grows by 19.1% in 10M 2023 - Russian Interior Ministry

MOSCOW. Dec 4 (Interfax) - The number of issued international travel passports, most of them valid for five years, has increased by 19.1%, the press service for the Russian Interior Ministry's migration department said.

"The overall number of public services for issuing international travel passports has grown by 19.1% from 4.1 million to 4.9 million. However, the number of public services for issuing international travel passports has increased by 108.4 % for documents with a five-year validity period from 1.4 million to 3 million, and declined by 29.4% from 2.7 million to 1.9 million for those valid for 10 years, which is attributed to the fact that the issuance of 10-year biometric passports was temporarily halted in February-May 2023 (for reasons beyond the Russian Interior Ministry's control)," the migration department said in an analytical note about the department's results in the first ten months of 2023.

The number of public services provided for issuing and renewing Russian internal passports has risen by 30.3% from 6.2 million to 8 million, which "is due to residents of the Donetsk People's Republic, Lugansk People's Republic, the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions obtaining their main identity documents as Russian citizens," it said.