Foreign Ministry: suspension of ten-year foreign passport issuance - temporary measure

The suspension of the issuance of ten-year foreign passports in a temporary measure linked with the technical maintenance of the system, five-year passports are issued routinely, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"This is a purely temporary technical measure linked with the redesigning of ten-year passports. We have to reset the system due to the technological progress - let us refrain from going into technical details, they are of no interest for anyone. It is a purely technical measure," she said in an interview with the Voskresny Vecher (Sunday Evening) with Vladimir Solovyov program on the Rossiya-1 television channel.

According to Zakharova, traditional five-year foreign passports continue to be issued routinely.

The Russian foreign ministry’s consular department said earlier that it temporarily stops receiving applications for biometric ten-year passports from August 26, 2022 to redesign the embedded electronic microprocessor chip.