In Russia, new foreign passports that meet international standards have appeared. As the Rosbalt news agency reports, this was announced by Deputy Head of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, Colonel-General of Militia Alexander Chekalin. According to him, the level of protection against counterfeiting in the new passports is significantly higher than in the old ones.
“The main differences of the new foreign passport are the presence of a hologram instead of a seal on the photograph and a special machine-readable strip with the passport holder's data,” Chekalin noted. He stressed that a new-type foreign passport will exist in parallel with old-type foreign passports, which will be replaced in the usual manner (after five years). The general stated that the innovation “will not complicate or change the previous procedure for issuing foreign passports.”
According to Alexander Chekalin, from 2006 Russia may see foreign passports with biometric data of holders. Even now, the passport and visa department has several developments of such a passport. It will have a digital photograph. “But the main innovation is a microchip built into the passport, which will contain dactyloscopic data (fingerprints) of the passport owner,” Chekalin emphasized.
According to Deputy Head of the Main Passport and Visa Department of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs Leonid Gerbanovsky, all Russian citizens who received Ukrainian visas in their passports when crossing the border need to replace their passport. There are known cases when Ukrainian customs officers put their visas there when crossing the border with Ukraine. And under Russian law, a passport must not contain any extraneous marks or corrections. The passport and visa department of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs has repeatedly appealed to its Ukrainian colleagues with a request to stop such practice, but so far no results have been obtained.