Ukraine sees delays in issuing foreign passports due to shortage of blank forms

Ukraine has recorded problems with the issuance of foreign passports: passport service offices are running short of blank forms, and queues at administrative services centers have grown longer.

This was reported by the Ukrainian outlet Strana.

An employee at one of the Kyiv passport service branches told the outlet about the scale of the delays and the uncertainty over timelines.

“The delays have only just begun. We were told that there is a shortage of blank forms. We don’t know how badly the deadlines could be missed. If you order expedited processing, it most likely won’t be done within the standard seven working days. We hope it won’t take longer than two weeks, but it’s hard to say for certain,” the outlet quotes her as saying.

According to the employee, the surge in demand is driven by two factors: a seasonal spike — many Ukrainians are traveling abroad on vacation — and the fact that citizens have begun en masse to obtain new foreign passports without waiting for their old ones to expire.

At the same time, she observed that some citizens are circumventing the legal requirement to surrender a valid document.

“Many people are ordering a new document even though their old one is still valid for up to six months. And instead of surrendering the valid passport as required by law, they submit a statement claiming it was lost,” the employee said.