“Always turned a blind eye”: Shoigu's children, Putin's friends and FSB generals have diplomatic passports

“They always turned a blind eye”: Shoigu's children, Putin's friends and FSB generals have diplomatic passports Irina Chebotnikova

The Russian publication The Insider has found out that in Russia diplomatic passports are being distributed to people whose status does not provide for this. The list of holders of diplomatic passports is interesting.

24 The channel, citing The Insider, reports the details. Due to sanctions, the “crust” is no longer valued as much as before, but it still provides certain advantages.

Who is being issued passports in Russia

Diplomatic passports in Russia are held by Putin's friends, FSB generals, children of high-ranking politicians, Patriarch Kirill, top managers of state-owned companies, including Igor Sechin, as well as billionaires Oleg Deripaska, Alisher Usmanov and Igor Yusufov. At the same time, some oligarchs close to Putin are considered “honorary consuls” of foreign countries, including European ones, in Russia, the article says.

In general, a diplomatic passport is intended for certain categories of people who are authorized to represent the state abroad, such as ministers or parliamentarians. Naturally, children of officials or billionaires are not included in this list. However, in Russia, diplomatic passports are issued, among other things, by decision of Putin.

Which Russians have diplomatic passports:

• children of Sergei Shoigu, Dmitry Medvedev, Mikhail Mishustin;
• billionaires Oleg Deripaska and Alisher Usmanov;
• head of Rostec Sergei Chemezov, head of Rosneft Igor Sechin;
• presidential aide Andrei Fursenko;
• head of the Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill;
• FSB generals Alexander Bortnikov, Sergei Beseda, Sergei Korolev and Alexey Sedov.

For example, before the start of the full-scale war, FSB officers flew to France and Switzerland using diplomatic passports.

“Formally, a diplomatic passport is an official document. Civil servants can only fly with it on business trips, and upon return they must hand it in to the HR department. But this rule, of course, does not apply to everyone. Travel by VIPs with a diplomatic passport to somewhere like the Cote d'Azur was always turned a blind eye,” explained one of the former officials.

It is interesting that after the start of the war, this document no longer provides as many opportunities as before. Since many countries have imposed sanctions on Russians, it is no longer possible to travel to the Schengen zone without a visa. But you can fly to Albania, Iceland, China, and some African countries. And also, since all these people are not diplomats per se, they do not have diplomatic immunity. That is, they can be arrested, their homes are not inviolable, and there is no privacy of correspondence. If a scandal occurs, these people can be expelled from the country and declared persona non grata.

As the media pointed out, the loophole with diplomatic passports for Putin's friends cannot be closed.

“If the presidential administration asks you or Vladimir Vladimirovich asks you to issue one to one of his friends, then they will issue one, of course. This is an abuse from the point of view of common sense, but this is not clearly spelled out in the law. The diplomats themselves also abuse this, since in general the passport must be handed over to the HR department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and you only receive it for the duration of a business trip, but many do not do this and use it for personal trips,” the former diplomat admitted to journalists.