In Russia, twice as many foreign passports were issued in six months

From January to June, almost 2.5 million foreign passports were issued in Russia, which is 45% more compared to the same period in 2021, when Russians received 1.7 million foreign passports. This follows from the information on the migration situation in the Russian Federation published by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In total, in the first half of the year, the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued a little more than 5.9 million passports, of which 2.5 million were foreign and 3.4 million were domestic.

In terms of months, the peak in obtaining international passports fell on March: then 553,000 people received documents. For January and February, the values ​​are less - 238 thousand and 406 thousand, respectively. In March, there was the strongest increase in six months in obtaining foreign passports: they were issued by 36% more than in February. In April and May, the number of issued documents decreased, in June it increased to 446,000 foreign passports, but did not exceed the April indicator of almost 470,000 documents.

The number of foreign passports issued in January-June is the largest in the last three years and exceeds the number of passports issued in the same period in 2021, 2020 and pre-pandemic 2019. The number in 2021 and 2020 was affected by the COVID pandemic, so comparison with them is not significant.

In January-June 2019, Russians received 2.3 million foreign passports, which is about 200,000 documents less than this year. In general, the figures for 2022 are comparable to the statistics on the issuance of 2018 and 2017: then the Ministry of Internal Affairs issued almost 2.6 million and 2 million foreign passports, respectively. In the first six months of 2016, significantly fewer documents were issued - almost 1.2 million documents.

The increase in the number of international passports in January and February 2022 can be interpreted as pent-up demand for foreign travel: tours have risen in price during the pandemic, and countries have established quarantine restrictions, says demographer Aleksey Raksha. “This can be regarded as a return to the pre-Covid period,” he said.

At the same time, an increase in the issuance of international passports in March against the backdrop of the closure of airspace by many countries and difficulties in traveling abroad can no longer be explained by deferred demand, Raksha added. In his opinion, the start of the military operation in Ukraine had an impact on the growth in the issuance of foreign passports.

An increase in the number of issued international passports in March compared to February was also observed in 2018-2019, however, it continued a single trend towards an increase in the number of documents by the summer, in contrast to 2022, and, moreover, was less.

RBC sent a request to the press center of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

Since the end of February, when Russia launched a special operation in Ukraine, the departure of Russians abroad has intensified. About 75,000 citizens came to Armenia from Russia, Minister of Economy Vahan Kerobyan said in an interview with RBC in April.

According to the Federal Security Service, in January-March 2022, 3.88 million Russian citizens went abroad - 36% less than in the last quarter of 2021, but 46% more than in January-March last year. According to RBC, 28% of trips were to states recognized by the Russian authorities as unfriendly: Ukraine, Finland, Estonia and Germany.

The Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC) estimated that between 50,000 and 70,000 IT specialists left the country in February-March. In May, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said that 85% of IT professionals who had previously left Russia had returned.