*** 12:48
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation has denied press reports about plans to ban the issuance and replacement of state documents for Russian citizens abroad.
“Outright lies and lies,” the Russian news agency RIA quotes the Russian Foreign Ministry’s commentary on relevant publications in the media.
*** 11:50
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs may stop processing foreign passports and other documents through consular offices in third countries. The publication Novaya Gazeta writes about this, citing the draft order.
Russian citizens will be asked to apply exclusively to institutions located on the territory of the Russian Federation to obtain government documents. According to Novaya Gazeta, such restrictions are planned to be introduced this year. The publication was unable to obtain comments from the Russian diplomatic department.
Similar bans have already been introduced in Belarus (in September last year) and Ukraine (this week).
According to UN statistics, in 2021, about 10 million Russian citizens lived permanently abroad. As a result of the outbreak of war in Ukraine, at least about 700 thousand Russian citizens left their country.
Of the almost 15 thousand citizens of the Russian Federation who asked for asylum in EU countries in 2022, only about 2 thousand people received status. Others are forced to rely on a Russian passport as their only form of identification.
After the ban imposed by Minsk, many political emigrants from Belarus live in Europe with invalid passports. Activists have repeatedly appealed to the UN with a request to recognize their documents as valid, or to provide something like “Nansen passports”, similar to those issued 100 years ago to refugees from post-revolutionary Russia.
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