From June 1, the Ministry of Internal Affairs will resume accepting applications for the issuance of biometric passports.
Photo: Oleg GOLD
From June 1, the Ministry of Internal Affairs will resume accepting applications for the issuance of biometric passports. This was announced by the official representative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Irina Volk.
Recall that the issuance of biometric passports (their validity period is 10 years) was suspended in early February. In Goznak, this was explained by the fact that the demand for passports has grown sharply, and there are not enough chips for their production. And the matter turned out to be not in the sanctions: since 2013, chips produced by Mikron JSC near Moscow have been used in new-style international passports. And they just didn’t get enough.
As a result, from February to the present, it was possible to issue only an old-style international passport, the validity of which is 5 years.
Starting from June 1, it will be possible to apply for a biometric passport at the MFC, on the website of the State Services, as well as at the territorial body of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. On its cover page, the document contains a microchip with information about the owner and scans of his fingerprints. It has more pages than the regular one: 46 instead of 36.
Issuing a biometric passport is more expensive. An old-style international passport costs 2,000 rubles for adults, and 1,000 rubles for children under 14. Adults will pay a fee of 5,000 rubles for issuing a new international passport; for children under 14, it costs 2,500 rubles.
It takes from two weeks to a month to obtain a biometric passport (depending on where the application is submitted). The fastest way to get a ready-made passport is by sending an application through the State Services.
An old-style foreign passport has the same legal force as a biometric passport. With it you can travel to any country in the world except Saudi Arabia. They only accept biometric passports.
As for the countries that are members of the EU, only Malta has officially refused to accept five-year passports for visas. On April 11, information appeared on the website of the Malta Visa Application Center that the issuance of Schengen visas to holders of five-year foreign passports of the Russian Federation is temporarily limited. Tourists have also reported on social media that the Danish embassy refuses to put visas in regular passports. But there was no official confirmation from the embassy.
The Bulgarian national visa (the country is not part of Schengen) is also put only in Russian passports with biometrics.
And one more important point: you cannot enter a child in a biometric passport, a passport is issued for him separately. But in the old-style foreign passport, you can enter children under 14 years old. But in this case, the child can go abroad only with the parent who has the appropriate mark on the document.
