May 24, 2023

FSB To Seize Passports


FSB To Seize Passports

The State Duma is going to give the FSB the right to take away passports at the border, reported VotTak.

On May 20, the State Duma adopted in its second reading amendments to the law “On the Procedure for Departure from the Russian Federation and Entry into the Russian Federation.” Several articles appear in the document that will allow the FSB, which staffs border checkpoints, to check the passports of Russians at border points, invalidate them and confiscate them.

The law has been in the works since 2021, and includes passports of citizens of the Russian Federation, as well as foreign, service, and diplomatic passports. Here are some of the grounds under which passports may be invalidated.

  • loss of a passport
  • change of personal data (last name, first name, patronymic), as well as gender change;
  • expiration of the passport;
  • death of the holder;
  • termination of citizenship of the Russian Federation;
  • cancellation of the decision to acquire a passport;
  • establishing that the holder of the passport does not have citizenship of the Russian Federation based on the results of an audit conducted as part of verifying one's citizenship of the Russian Federation in the manner established by the President of the Russian Federation;
  • establishing the fact of issuing a passport using forged documents or false information;
  • establishing inaccurate information in the passport;
  • establishing that a passport is unsuitable;
  • non-receipt of a passport by its owner after three years from the date of issue of the passport.

Points that stand out include “verifying one's citizenship of the Russian Federation” (the procedure for which will be determined by Vladimir Putin) and “inaccurate information” on which a passport was issued. If border guards establish the invalidity of the passport, then they will seize it, send it to the authority that issued the document, and force it to be checked. At the same time, not only the FSB officers at the border control, but also the authority that issued the document can seize the passport.

In addition, the government wants to allow the seizure of passports of those who, under an employment contract, may have access to state secrets. According to the law, they can be banned from leaving the Russian Federation for five years after the moment of their last interaction with the state secret. However, a special Interdepartmental Commission for the Protection of State Secrets may extend this period.

In fact, the new version of the law gives authorities the right to confiscate passports if they have doubts about the document's authenticity.

Lawyer Ivan Pavlov said he does not see anything “revolutionary or new” in the new version of the law and calls the nature of the document “technical.”

“[The law] prescribes certain actions for the [FSB] department if there are grounds for restricting a citizen’s right to leave,” Pavlov explained. “Here they [the border guards] encounter this citizen when crossing the state border and see that he is admitted to state secrets, and <…> his right to leave is limited. [Border guards] should simply confiscate this document and send it for storage to the appropriate department - the Ministry of Internal Affairs. <...> When a citizen runs out of grounds for a travel ban, then he [a passport] will be issued.”

In March, it became known that certain judges and security officials had their passports seized, as employees of state-owned organizations. Officials were directly asked to deposit their documents with the FSB or with a special department at their place of work.

Translation based on publication in TakVot.

You Might Also Like

We'll Swim After Victory
  • October 15, 2022

We'll Swim After Victory

Our correspondent was offered a business trip to Odesa, Ukraine. He took it and brought this back.
Trekking In Partisan Footsteps
  • May 01, 2011

Trekking In Partisan Footsteps

Eastern Crimea was a center for partisan activity during the Great Patriotic War. In honor of the May Day holiday, we trek through this wild realm along the Black Sea.
A Wall of Resistance
  • February 27, 2023

A Wall of Resistance

A Russian shopkeeper's picture went viral after using the walls of his shop to express opposition to the invasion of Ukraine.
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

Maria's War: A Soldier's Autobiography

This astonishingly gripping autobiography by the founder of the Russian Women’s Death Battallion in World War I is an eye-opening documentary of life before, during and after the Bolshevik Revolution.
Steppe / Степь

Steppe / Степь

This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.
Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
Fish: A History of One Migration

Fish: A History of One Migration

This mesmerizing novel from one of Russia’s most important modern authors traces the life journey of a selfless Russian everywoman. In the wake of the Soviet breakup, inexorable forces drag Vera across the breadth of the Russian empire. Facing a relentless onslaught of human and social trials, she swims against the current of life, countering adversity and pain with compassion and hope, in many ways personifying Mother Russia’s torment and resilience amid the Soviet disintegration.
Murder and the Muse

Murder and the Muse

KGB Chief Andropov has tapped Matyushkin to solve a brazen jewel heist from Picasso’s wife at the posh Metropole Hotel. But when the case bleeds over into murder, machinations, and international intrigue, not everyone is eager to see where the clues might lead.
Moscow and Muscovites

Moscow and Muscovites

Vladimir Gilyarovsky's classic portrait of the Russian capital is one of Russians’ most beloved books. Yet it has never before been translated into English. Until now! It is a spectactular verbal pastiche: conversation, from gutter gibberish to the drawing room; oratory, from illiterates to aristocrats; prose, from boilerplate to Tolstoy; poetry, from earthy humor to Pushkin. 
22 Russian Crosswords

22 Russian Crosswords

Test your knowledge of the Russian language, Russian history and society with these 22 challenging puzzles taken from the pages of Russian Life magazine. Most all the clues are in English, but you must fill in the answers in Russian. If you get stumped, of course all the puzzles have answers printed at the back of the book.
The Moscow Eccentric

The Moscow Eccentric

Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.
The Samovar Murders

The Samovar Murders

The murder of a poet is always more than a murder. When a famous writer is brutally stabbed on the campus of Moscow’s Lumumba University, the son of a recently deposed African president confesses, and the case assumes political implications that no one wants any part of.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955