With the start of the holiday season, employees of Russian passport offices are making gloomy forecasts - in the coming months they will have more work. After returning from a holiday in Ukraine, crowds of Russians will flock to exchange passports - Ukrainian customs has turned into a real conveyor belt for turning Russian internal passports into invalid pieces of paper.
The other day, an Izvestia correspondent, Natalya Konygina, was detained at Murmansk airport. The girl at passport control studied the document for a long time and finally told her colleague: “There are problems with the passport here too,” and asked him to step aside, where a fellow sufferer was already standing, completely not understanding what was wrong with his “passport.” “A man will come now and explain everything to you,” the girl reassured him.
After a while, a “man” in police uniform appeared and said that because of the Ukrainian stamps about crossing the border, which had been placed back last year, these documents are invalid. “We will, of course, let you through, but you will have to exchange your passports,” the border guards handed down their “verdict.”
“The Regulations on the Passport of a Citizen of the Russian Federation contain clause 6,” commented the Deputy Head of the Russian Interior Ministry’s Passport Service, Yuri Ivashkin. “And this clause says that ‘a passport into which information, marks or entries not provided for by these Regulations have been inserted is invalid.’ And the stamps that Ukrainian customs puts in are precisely those ‘not provided for.’ By the way, this information is on the last page of the Russian passport.”
The Russian Interior Ministry’s passport service is well aware of the problem, but Russian passport officials are unable to convince the Ukrainian side otherwise.
“We have repeatedly received reports from citizens about such cases. We even sent a note to the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry asking to stop this practice. But, apparently, we have not been able to get the information through to every border guard,” Yuri Ivashkin laments.
Besides causing considerable trouble to Russians who decide to travel to the “independent” country, Ukrainian border guards also inflict significant damage on the Russian treasury. Russian passport workers, who are already unable to exchange old Soviet passports for new ones (there is a shortage of both blank forms and staff), will be forced to replace for the second time documents that are still smelling of printing ink.
According to Ivashkin, such a problem arises only when crossing the Ukrainian border. Customs officers of all other neighboring countries treat the Russian passport with respect.
So Russians have one option left: when going to Ukraine, to hide their internal passport away and show their foreign passport at the checkpoint. But one wants to think that all this is happening not out of malice, but solely due to the absent-mindedness of Ukrainian border guards. After all, starting June 15, Ukraine is beginning an experiment to simplify the customs control procedure. The heads of the State Border Committee and the State Customs Service of Ukraine hope that now guests entering and leaving Ukraine will have to spend much less time passing through border checkpoints. In accordance with the order, from June 15 to December 1, 2003, “green corridors” will be opened at all checkpoints, where vehicles and citizens will undergo border and customs control simultaneously in the shortest possible time. The order sets the time for carrying out the relevant procedures. For a pedestrian tourist, border guards and customs officers must spend up to one minute, for a car with three passengers - up to two minutes, for a minibus - up to six minutes, for a bus - up to 20 minutes. In this case, passengers will not need to get out of their cars, and all checks will take place “in one stop.”
Ukrainians are also going to fight corruption in the control services. Starting June 15, all border guards and customs officers are forbidden to carry mobile phones, pagers and large sums of money with them while working. To avoid misunderstandings, every official must wear a badge with a photo and personal data.
The Russian side welcomes the Ukrainian experiment. Belgorod customs officers hope that these measures will help increase the capacity of checkpoints on the Russian-Ukrainian border.
“At the Nekhoteevka - Goptovka checkpoint, we have organized 10 lanes for entry and exit on our side,” they said at the Belgorod customs office. “Plus separate lanes for buses and trucks. But the neighbors have only four lanes. If tourists from Russia cross the border fairly quickly, those who want to come to us from Ukraine have to stand in four-hour queues.”
Customs officers of the two countries are trying to agree on simplifying border procedures during the summer season, when Russians go to rest in Crimea, and Ukrainians bring fruit to Russia. Like their Western colleagues, they intend to inspect cars only once, but with two groups - Russian and Ukrainian.
By the way, Russian border guards look at the Ukrainian innovations with some envy. Exactly how much time Russian border guards and customs officers are supposed to spend on inspections according to the instructions is a military secret. But it is known that Russian service instructions set not only a maximum inspection time, but also a minimum one. So border guards have to “search” a citizen who inspires absolute trust for extra minutes: less is not allowed.
Наталья КОНЫГИНА,
Александр БОГОМОЛОВ