The Ministry of Internal Affairs has canceled the internal passports of two co-founders of the Omsk Civil Association (CSO) who left Russia, reports the organization’s Telegram channel. In June 2024, the Omsk Regional Court banned the association and declared the organization “extremist.”
32-year-old Daniil Chebykin and 38-year-old Richard King told Mediazona that they associate the cancellation of their documents with an application to the Russian embassy in Armenia to obtain new passports.
Chebykin submitted documents for a foreign passport to the consular department in Yerevan back in 2022, but he was denied the document. The basis for the refusal was a claim by the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Omsk Region, which in 2021 demanded the recovery of 2 million rubles from five local oppositionists — they had previously been recognized as organizers of rallies in support of Alexei Navalny on January 23 and 31.
Chebykin does not know when exactly his Russian passport was revoked, but his banking applications stopped working in 2023, he says. According to Chebykin, the embassy offered him “to return to his homeland and get a new passport there.”
“I found out [about the cancellation of the passport] at the beginning of 2023, but then the verification base [of the passport for validity in the State Services] was not working, and I could not check it remotely. And since this did not affect me in any way, I did not make this situation public.”
Chebykin’s colleague applied for a foreign passport at the consular department in Gyumri in December 2023. He learned about the invalidity of his Russian passport in January 2024, a few days after receiving a second passport.
“I received a message from Sberbank that my passport was invalid,” says King. — All bank applications stopped working for me, all SIM cards were Russian. I contacted lawyers, they wrote a request to the Ministry of Internal Affairs to find out on what basis the passport was invalidated — no one answered them.”
According to the Law “On Citizenship”, a passport is invalid if the document has expired (once the citizen reaches the age of 20 and 45), if it contains false information, if it has been damaged or worn out, and if it contains information cannot be discerned. The passport is canceled from the date of issue of a new document, from the day of renunciation of Russian citizenship, from the day of filing a statement about the theft or loss of the document, as well as from the date of death of the owner.
In addition, a passport can be canceled if a person has not collected it three years from the date of registration, if it turns out that the passport was issued on the basis of forged documents, it was produced on a fake form, or it turns out that the person does not have a Russian citizenship. The document may also be seized as evidence and cancelled, the law says.