Russia has started issuing biometric foreign passports again. Baza writes about this, citing a source in Goznak. He claims that the issuance of passports has resumed in the standard mode, but the period for their receipt may be extended due to applications that have accumulated during the pause.
Recall that the issuance of biometric passports for a period of 10 years was suspended on February 2, 2023. This was done due to the increased demand for the chips used in them. An engineer and chip designer in the aerospace industry told The Insider that the manufacturer of electronic passport chips, Mikron, is heavily dependent on foreign suppliers.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov advised Russians to “keep it simple” and get ordinary passports instead of biometrics: “For the rest, they accept [applications] for ordinary passports. You answered your own question. Surely there are some technical problems with the chips or something else. Keep it simple, use regular passports.”
