Russia cancels national ID cards for anti-war exiles

It seems that the Russian authorities have found a new way of pressuring opposition activists who left the country: annulling their internal passports — effectively a national ID card. So far a few cases have emerged and it is not clear whether this will be a widespread measure. But the potential cancellation of internal passports threatens serious bureaucratic problems for Russian citizens living abroad.

• Two political activists from Omsk, Siberia’s largest city, had their internal passports annulled, they reported last week. Daniil Cheykin and Richard King, founders of the Omsk Civil Association project, which reported on political repression in the Siberian region of Omsk, discovered in exile that their documents — which effectively work as a national ID card and are issued to every Russian citizen — had stopped working. Both left Russia shortly after the invasion of Ukraine and headed to Armenia. King later moved to Germany. 
• Chebykin learned that his passport was no longer valid in 2023 when he tried to use a Russian banking app and was unable to access the Russian government’s state services portal, Gosuslugi. King first had problems in early 2024. The activists attribute their problems to the fact that they visited Russian embassies to try to change their regular passports, which are used for international travel.
• Chebykin and King cannot reactivate their internal passports from abroad. They would have to return to Russia, where they could be arrested and jailed. Without a valid internal passport, Russians are not only unable to get new passports for foreign travel, they are also unable to request consular services, experts said. Chebykin is now applying for refugee status in Armenia, while King has a German document confirming his identity before he secures residency. 
• According to the pair, they know of at least three more individuals whose internal passports were annulled.

Why the world should care:

According to law, Russian internal passports can only be officially canceled if found to contain an error, for instance, the holder’s personal information was printed incorrectly. However, experts believe that in the future more ‘reasons’ will be found by which to declare official government documents invalid, something that could seriously complicate life for anti-war activists living abroad. Nevertheless, it should be noted that so far only isolated cases like King’s and Chebykin’s have emerged, so it is hard to say whether this practice will be used more widely.