In Russia, there is an insane demand for the issuance of fake Ukrainian passports and birth certificates.
Oddly enough, Russians want to become Ukrainians – there is an insane demand for Ukrainian passports in the Russian Federation. As fake sellers promise, a “document” for thousands of dollars will help you move from Russia to Europe with all the benefits of refugee status in Ukraine. What happens if you show European border guards a fake passport with a trident is beyond the story.
How the system works
The Russian publication Fontanka writes about the popularity of fake Ukrainian passports among the Russian population. According to media reports, most of the Network’s offers for papers are legal legal services for Ukrainian refugees who, for one reason or another, have lost their passport or marriage certificate and cannot return to their homeland for them. However, citizens of the Russian Federation began to use such “services”. To do this, they are added to closed Telegram channels and public Facebook pages.
“A passport (we are talking about a domestic or an ordinary foreigner – ed.) is made from the original forms. We enter the data in the state register through connections, you receive an INN and a birth certificate, which is also entered in the register of the registry office. The passport series and number are printed using a perforation printer. On the pages “All the necessary stamps will be stamped. As a result, you will receive a real document that you can safely use,” said one of the advertisements.
Other sellers offer to issue a birth certificate and promise that with it you can get a biometric passport and travel freely with it. Another service is the sale of a blank internal Ukrainian passport, “completely clean” and “with original watermarks.”
The price without filling is 2.5 thousand dollars, with filling it is from three to nine thousand dollars, the publication added.
At the same time, the journalists noticed that during the preparation of the article they met a fairly honest seller, who immediately admitted that no one can fake a Ukrainian biometric passport, but they will provide a fake certificate of birth or an international passport of Ukraine, and for a moderate amount for the “market” – 350 and 2000 euros respectively.
Crossing the border
Sellers or buyers do not specifically share reviews of successfully crossing the border and obtaining a residence permit with false documents. But in one of the chats with emigrants, journalists found “the happy owner of a fake Ukrainian passport, Ksenia, now a citizen of Latvia.”
“I want to move to the Baltic states – I have friends there, I know the language and it’s easy to find a job there. What will happen to me in some Georgia or Kazakhstan is a big question. I probably won’t get a job So fast. But as a citizen of the Russian Federation, entry is closed to me,” he said about how he decided on an adventure.
Ksenia found the seller of fake documents through friends. He said that he “didn’t fall for the myth about getting a biometric passport,” so he decided to do something cunning: he bought a foreign passport and a certificate. The “documents” were sent to him by mail two weeks later, for them, including delivery, he paid 2.5 thousand dollars.
“I was moving with a stream of Ukrainian refugees. He said he lost his passport on the way. The conversation with the border guards was the worst. But nothing, they checked, they let me in,” he said.
Ksenia refused to tell journalists how she was able to reach Latvia and get a residence permit using fake documents. And he deleted all his messages “for safety.”
As Russian migration lawyer Anna Adaevskaya told the publication, it is indeed possible to cross the border in this way.
“In my practice, there are such cases. There are intermediaries working for both sides, people cross the border, pay some amount of money and get lost in that territory,” he said.
As for the most false passports, it is a question of procedure for issuing documents in principle. As Adaevskaya explained, in transfer services the system detects errors only during the work process.
At the same time, the lawyer noted that Ukrainian biometric passports make it impossible to earn extra money – The Russians just learned how to paste and laminate photographs and put the necessary stamps, but even a skilled fraudster can’t handle biometrics. Another question is that with the flow of refugees, it is quite possible to cross the border without documents, especially if you have at least something instead of a plastic ID card.
This is what Russians use when crossing borders with EU countries.: they claim that the passport is lost, but there is a certificate and a foreign Ukrainian passport, which is easier to fake.
Criminal proceedings
The story of the sale of false documents is indeed true, Fontanka wrote. So, in January, the State Security Service (SSS) of Azerbaijan discovered a group engaged in forgery of Ukrainian documents.
Over the course of a year, criminals “stamped” foreign passports and Ukrainian driver’s licenses. They charge up to 30 thousand dollars for their “services”.
“In particular, the organized crime group… illegally provided citizens of Azerbaijan and citizens of other countries (in particular, the Russian Federation – ed.) with official Ukrainian documents to live in various foreign countries, receive asylum and move freely without a visa under the name of citizens of Ukraine,” they said.SGB.
During the investigation, users of these fake documents were also discovered in European countries.
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Source: korrespondent
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.