TASS claims that the Ministry of the Interior is not allowed to issue a foreign passport without a military ID card. For now, such a refusal can be appealed, but the legalization of the practice is not a problem for the authorities. The Ministry of the Interior cited the lack of a military ID card for a man of military age as a basis for refusing to accept documents for a foreign passport, reports TASS with reference to materials that have not yet been published by the Ministry. According to the administrative regulations of the Ministry of the Interior, a military ID can only be requested if it is available. In other cases, the authorities themselves must send a request to the Military Registration and Recruiting Bureau and find out whether the person has a restriction on leaving the country, Timofi Veskin, head of the legal department of the human rights organization "Recruitment School", told Important Stories. The requirement applies only to citizens of military age. "After you reach the age of 30, there is no need at all for military registration documents, even according to the existing rules," Vaskin says. In practice, MFC employees regularly require young people to provide a military ID or registration certificate when applying for a foreign passport. Sometimes the department does not accept documents if a citizen refuses to provide military or registered documents. In this case, the citizen can appeal the refusal to a higher unit of the Ministry of the Interior and the supervisory authorities, the Telegram channel "Military Lawyers" writes. This is illegal because the administrative regulations do not impose an obligation on the citizen to submit military registration documents. Usually this problem is solved by requiring a written refusal. And usually a written refusal is not given, because they understand that it is illegal. says Waskin. The TASS publication does not indicate which "materials of the Ministry of the Interior" we are talking about. It is not clear what kind of documents these are and what legal force they have. If the authorities want to legalize this practice, they can easily do so, Vaskin believes. It is enough to make changes to the administrative regulations of the Ministry of the Interior, which determine the procedure for issuing passports. "Nothing prevents the Ministry of the Interior from introducing this rule," says the expert.