Thread: Renewing a passport

I'm wondering how long does it take to renew passport required to leave Russia?

My girlfriend went to visit her family over at mother russia and needs to renew hers, problem is she's saying it's going to take 1 month and a half, worse case scenario, to get it renewed.

And here's the real headache: The russian autorithies want records from what she did the last 10 years she spent in Portugal and she wasn't warned about this when she left the country so she has to find some way to request the documents from her job and education back home and translate them to Russian (Which is another problem since she can't even speak or write very well... She was raised and intends to keep living her life here) to get her passport and be able to travel back. And it seems that the fact she has both Portuguese and Russian nationality and passports doesn't matter in Russia...

Her plane tickets are booked to October 1st, she's confident she can get everything solved and passport in hand before that... But i'm not so sure. Is there anything she can do to speed the process up? I told her to go to the Portuguese embassy in Moscow to see if they can help with anything, she agrees and will go but it's an 8 hour car ride from her hometown to Moscow so we're wondering if it's worth the time and trouble. The OVIR officials in her town are being anything but helpful, she's going to travel to another city tonight and see if she has better luck.

Depends on a lot of things. If her Russian passport already expired it'll take longer, and if her internal passport isn't up to date she'll probably have to do that first, and that can take months.

If she entered Russia on her Russian passport then the Portuguese embassy can't do anything.

Her internal passport is up to date I reckon, what she needs is the passport to leave the country. According to what they told her it'll take 1 month and a half max to renew it but they require documents of what she did over here, i'm not sure why...She's very worried they start processing her request already, after it's in motion then we can relax and just wait until the passport is sorted so she can finally leave. I think she entered the country on her russian passport which means it wasn't already expired but needs to be renewed.


What's amazing is she went to the russian embassy before travelling, got the visa to leave the country and everything, showed them the tickets.. And they didn't warn her she needed things before being able to leave. It's going to be a couple of months she's spending there doing nothing and wasting tons of money and i'm hoping that's just the couple... And if she's even a few weeks overdue October 1st, her deadline to sign up and attend college will pass.

Still one month and a half left until the day her tickets are booked, here's to hoping it gets sorted fast. One month and a half is still alot of time though, I do believe they'll sort everything out on time. Then again I don't know how the russian officials work


So, if her internal passport is up to date, her russian passport expired or about to expire how long do you think it'll take? She doesn't want to spend endless meaningless months over there doing nothing... And I certainly don't want to spend months without her. The 2 planned months were already going to be very hard, when I learned it might take longer I panicked...

I have no idea why the Russian authorities are asking her to justify what she's done since she's been out of the country. That sounds odd. My wife has renewed her Russian passport twice since we've been married. The first time she did it on a trip back to Russia, I think it took three weeks altogether (she might have been renewing her internal one at the same time, I can't really remember), and the second time she did it at the embassy in the UK. It took three months that time, but that was because her previous one had expired two years earlier. They never asked her about what she was doing in the UK.

Also, this bit is confusing:

What's amazing is she went to the russian embassy before travelling, got the visa to leave the country and everything, showed them the tickets..

Why did she need a visa or anything else from the Russian embassy if she was a dual national and her passport was valid?

I'm not sure either, I hope she can get it sorted out tomorrow and gets some answers from the OVIR guys as to why they want to know that stuff, no one explained or told her she needed such things before. Could be some officer abusing his power and doing his job wrong, she's going to try another OVIR agency tomorrow going to travel to another city.


Well, she told me she just needs to renew her external passport. She entered Russia with a papper they gave her at the Embassy in Portugal. So i'm assuming her Russian Passport was expired, it expires at 20 I believe and she's 21, and she entered the country with that papper and the Portuguese passport - I THINK.

She might have just entered the country with a visa or whatever that papper they gave her is.

And I hope it doesn't take 3 months like your wife's. Again, they told her it takes a maximum 1 month and a half to get it done. Makes sense since she's in russian territory anyway, should be much faster. And I believe she can legally speed the process up if it's urgent, for a fee ofc.

She's worried when will they decide to accept her application and start finally making her passport. We're both clueless and shocked as to why they require that information, why she wasn't warned, why she can't just do the easiest and simplest thing and actually send the pappers to the embassy they are demanding when she's on Portuguese ground because getting them from another country is just damn right mission impossible... Besides not wanting to stay on the country anymore and wanting to come home, Russia is a very expensive country. At this rate she's going to spend all her hard earned money on a waiting game and burocracies...

Some things cheer us up though. Renewing passports still takes long but not the endless months of before, people even get them done in 2 weeks on a general basis nowadays or so i'm told...

She also has no one that can help her send her the things, besides me and I'm not in our hometown and can't be for the next month... Isn't there a way the government can let her send her documents to the embassy when she's back home? Give her a temp visa or something?