The man applied through the Gosuslugi state services portal at his registered address and received the refusal two weeks later, citing a "temporary restriction on leaving the Russian Federation by the Military Commissariat." No record of any such restriction appears in state registries.
He said he last visited a military commissariat about eight years ago, when he was in the tenth grade. Since then he has taken part in no conscription procedures and has been issued no decision on conscription or referral to alternative civilian service.
Lawyers at the School of a Conscript, a legal aid group for draftees, consider the refusal unlawful and have filed complaints with the military commissariat and the prosecutor's office. "The ban on leaving the country for failure to appear on a summons does not in itself give grounds to refuse to issue a foreign passport. This must be appealed. And here the military commissariat can explain it all as a technical error; such cases have happened before," said Mikhail Liberov, a lawyer at the organization.
The Telegram channel Mozhem Obyasnit ("We Can Explain") has reported similar cases. A Moscow resident said he was refused a foreign passport in late July, with officials citing his status as a person liable for military service and suggesting he try again in six months. He said two acquaintances faced the same situation and decided to travel to Armenia using their internal passports.
A channel subscriber from the Moscow region said he applied for a foreign passport back in June but later received the status "suspended." There were no available appointments at the multifunctional public services center (MFC) in his city, and he could only find a slot in a neighboring one. The processing time for a foreign passport issued outside one's place of registration has increased from one month to three.
Users of travel-related Telegram chats have also complained about delays. In their view, the delays stem from the large number of people seeking foreign passports. Artyom Klyga, a lawyer at the human rights organization Connection e.V., advises citing the administrative regulation and the deadlines fixed in it. "An Interior Ministry employee may tell you anything verbally, even that the passport will be issued in a year. But if you show the regulation and knowledge of the process, the problem is usually resolved fairly quickly," he said.
Klyga has said that exit restrictions for conscripts began to be applied systematically in the spring. According to him, the bans started to trigger regularly at the border and at airports, and Russian databases began exchanging such data with Belarusian border guards.
The passport problems come amid rumors of a new wave of mobilization after the September State Duma elections. Sources close to the Kremlin told The Economist that Vladimir Putin may not announce a new call-up officially, as the 2022 decree remains in force. According to the publication's interlocutors, the Kremlin could conscript another 300,000 to 400,000 people. Putin himself has called reports of a new mobilization "nonsense" and an "information attack."