A foreign passport is a mandatory attribute for traveling around the world: without it, Russian citizens can enter only five countries of the post-Soviet space: Abkhazia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. “Subtleties” studied the statistics and found out how many passport holders are among our compatriots. Spoiler: a very small percentage. The last large-scale study on this topic was conducted by the Levada Center in 2016. Then it turned out that only 28% of Russians, that is, 40 million people, have passports. Most document holders are managers, managers and people aged 25 to 40 with higher education. Muscovites have more international passports than the national average — 60%. Among residents of cities with a population of over 100 thousand people, 32% have a passport. 72% of the Russian population (a little over 100 million people) do without it. In 2021, a similar online survey was conducted by the Zarplata.ru service. More than 2,000 people from all regions of the country took part in it. 69 % of respondents admitted that they do not have a passport. According to the Public Opinion Foundation, the same number of Russians have never traveled abroad. 
Statistics
Dynamics
In 2022, the demand for foreign passports increased sharply: according to the statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, about 2.5 million of them were issued in the first half of the year, which is 45% more compared to In the same period in 2021, 8.5 million people managed to use a foreign passport – this is a quarter more than last year, but 60% less than in pre-Covid 2019. Most Russians traveled to Turkey, Egypt, the UAE, the CIS and Baltic countries . Tourist flow to most European countries decreased by 25-50%.
From September of this year, it will be more difficult to get to Europe: Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland have stopped issuing tourist visas to Russians, and other EU countries have suspended the simplified visa regime with Russia. The Schengen visa has risen in price by more than 2 times, it will take longer to wait, and additional documents will have to be provided for registration.
