It has become difficult to obtain a passport in large cities

Some Russians complain about queues

In Moscow and several other million-plus cities in Russia there are no free departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs that issue foreign passports. And in a number of others, most units were overloaded. This is evidenced by the data from State Services, which was studied by Vorstka.

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Each of more than a hundred metropolitan departments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs have the status of “high workload”

When applying for a biometric passport through Gosuslugi, the Vorstka journalist was not offered a single “free” or “averagely busy” office in Moscow. Each of more than a hundred metropolitan departments had a “high workload” status, and when selected, a warning was displayed: “There are very few available appointment slots in the department at this time—it will be difficult to make an appointment.” The same situation occurred in St. Petersburg.

Branches in Yekaterinburg, Kazan and Krasnodar were also overloaded. In these cases, other nearby cities in the region with low congestion were offered a choice - for example, Irbit in the Sverdlovsk region or Krymsk in the Krasnodar region. In Novosibirsk, out of six overcrowded departments, there was one with an “average” load, and in Samara there were two of these.

The situation turned out to be better in Nizhny Novgorod and Chelyabinsk, where two departments were free. One free unit was found in Krasnoyarsk and Rostov-on-Don.

Queues reach 100 people and visitors keep waiting lists in notebooks

Complaints about problems with obtaining a passport appeared on social networks in March. One of the Threads users said that she and her husband have not been able to sign up to submit documents in Moscow since December last year. Another - from St. Petersburg - said that she could not get a passport because of the queues.

“I haven’t been able to get my foreign card for 3 months now))) I arrived today at 9:40 (issue starts at 9:00) and there was already a line at 14:00,” she wrote.

On March 21, a similar story from a resident of Yekaterinburg was published by the local portal E1. The city resident said that since March 4 she could not pick up the completed document due to huge queues, which on one day reached 100 people. According to her, people at the entrance made a list in a notebook and were allowed into the office only based on it.

Meanwhile, many users on social networks, commenting on posts about problems with obtaining a document, claim that they had no difficulties obtaining a foreign passport. The Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Novosibirsk region told AIF-Novosibirsk that delays can indeed occur, but they are not widespread. The Yekaterinburg police say that the queues arise due to increased demand from citizens, but the department is “taking measures to optimize.”

Let us remind you that earlier “Verstka” told how the Russian consulate in Lithuania refused to issue a foreign passport to the wife of someone accused of discrediting the Russian Armed Forces. We also wrote that the Czech Republic began to refuse to extend residence permits to Russians with five-year passports without biometric data.

Photo: REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov