The Ukrainian passport is a document issued to the nationals of Ukraine

Ukraine

Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

 as the main proof of Ukrainian citizenship

Ukrainian citizenship

Citizenship of Ukraine is governed by the Law on Citizenship of Ukraine and by the Ukrainian Constitution.-Definition of Ukrainian citizenship:Citizens of Ukraine are defined as:...

.
There are two types of passport issued by the Ukrainian government that are commonly known as internal passport

Internal passport

An internal passport is an identity document used in some countries to control the internal movement and residence of its people. Countries that currently have internal passports include Russia, Ukraine, China and North Korea...

 and international passport

International passport

In some countries, the international passport or passport for travel abroad is a second passport, in addition to the internal passport, required for a citizen to travel abroad within the country of residence....

. An internal passport is used as a primary identification document of Ukrainian citizens within Ukraine. An international passport is used for international travel.

Internal passport

Internal passport is issued as an identification document within the country. Citizens are required to obtain the passport at the age of 16 and be in possession of it all of their life. The information in the passport includes the full name of the person (family name, patronymic name, given name), date and place of birth, photograph and signature of the holder, name of spouse if married, names of dependent children (younger than 16 year old), military eligibility, and the address of registration.
The passport has no present expiration date. Changes in marital status, military registration, and place of residence are subsequently recorded in the passport. Additional photographs need to be added at the age of 25 and 45. New passport can be obtained if there is a change in holder's name, most commonly due to marriage. New passports are also issued due to significant wear or tear, or when lost or stolen.

The information in the passport is recorded in Ukrainian language

Ukrainian language

Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....

, except for the full name, date and place of birth, and issuing authority, which are given both in Ukrainian and Russian.

The domestic passport is of no use outside of Ukraine, except for travel to Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 and Belarus

Belarus

Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...

. For international travel Ukrainians can obtain so-called "abroad" passport.

Ukraine had a plan to replace domestic passports with ID cards beginning in 2008, but postponed it to the future..

September 23, 2011 The Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) take a decision to replace domestic passports with ID cards (uk: Паспортна картка ) . According to above mentioned decision the Passport cards (id-cards) will be issuing since January 1, 2012.

International passport

Passport for travel abroad, commonly known as an "International Passport", is a document used for travel outside Ukraine. The passport information is recorded in Ukrainian and English. Passports are issued upon demand and is valid for 10 years. Its is permitted to have more than one passport.

The Ukrainian international passport follows international standards. Machine-readable passports

Machine-readable passport

A Machine Readable Passport is a travel document where the data on the identity page is encoded in optical character recognition format. Many countries began to issue machine readable travel documents in the 1980s....

 with two machine-readable strings at the bottom of the first page appeared in the mid 1990s. Current Ukrainian international passport looks like a biometric one

Biometric passport

A biometric passport, also known as an e-passport or ePassport, is a combined paper and electronic passport that contains biometric information that can be used to authenticate the identity of travelers...

, but in fact does not have any biometric information. Legislation permitting fingerprinting has not been yet adopted.

Photos in the passports issued since 2007 are black and white, laser imprinted. As a security feature, an additional holder's photo is specially imprinted to be seen only when looking to the light though the page of the passport. Previously, passports used to be issued either with a glued-in colour photo or with a colour imprinted photo. The previously issued passports are valid until their expiration date.

Ukrainian law allows for issuing international passports with 32 and 64 pages, but in practice only 32-page passports have been produced. Recently international passports have blue cover. Covers of the international passports issued in 1990s were red, allowing easy visual distinction from blue-colour internal passports.

By default, the first and last names in the international passport are transliterated from Ukrainian to English according to the National transliteration system (1996)

Romanization of Ukrainian

The romanization or Latinization of Ukrainian is the representation of the Ukrainian language using Latin letters. Ukrainian is natively written in its own Ukrainian alphabet, a variation of Cyrillic....

. However, any person has an option to request the desired English spelling of his first and last name, if he holds any document already having this spelling.

International Passports are issued only to citizens aged 18 and older (16 and older in case of permanent foreign residency). Prior to that age, Ukrainian citizens can get a Travel Document of a Child (PR type) similar in appearance to the passport. It is valid for 3 years, and has only 8 pages. In some rare case Ukrainian citizens are allowed to have International Passport before the age of 18 or 16, but it also is valid for only 3 years. If a child holding Ukrainian citizenship has been adopted by a foreign citizen — he or she may get regular International Passport, which is valid for 10 years, just as for adults, instead of getting Child Travel Document.

External links

• EDAPS Consortium – developer of the new international passport of Ukraine
• Abroad travel documents of Ukraine – Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine