As of yesterday, the Czech Republic no longer recognises non-biometric passports issued by the Russian Federation, and Russian citizens with such passports are now remaining in the country illegally, the Foreign Ministry told CTK today.
Denmark has already taken a similar step. The Czech Republic announced the measure at a meeting of the relevant EU body and called on other states to adopt the same measure.
A biometric passport is a passport with machine-readable data and a data carrier with biometric data that allows for the bearer to be identified, such as facial images and fingerprints.
“If a Russian citizen presents a non-biometric passport in the Czech Republic, they are here illegally, and we are still working on what to do with them. Non-biometric passports are much easier to modify and forge,” Mariana Wernerova from the ministry’s communications department told CTK.
“Security is a priority for our government,” said Foreign Minister Jan Lipavsky (Pirates). “We will not wait for another sabotage. Anyone who wants to stay in our country must prove their identity credibly. And in the case of the Russians, a passport with non-biometric data, with which the murderers from the Vrbetice case arrived, among others, will no longer be enough to do that.”
The Czech Republic suspects two officers of the Russian secret service GRU of being behind the 2014 two explosions of ammunition depots in Vrbetice. British investigators blame the same men for the 2018 poisoning of former Russian secret agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in Britain.
Lipavsky intends to keep pushing a proposal in the European Union to restrict the movement of Russian diplomats in Schengen, which, he said, “is another instrument of espionage against democratic countries.”
