Taken from the Moscow Times
Editor,
I am a Moscow-based lawyer and am looking forward to radical police reform in Russia aimed at establishing confidence in the police on the part of ordinary people. Without such confidence, any fight with terrorism would be a bluff. Below is my advice for people if stopped by the police who want to check their documents.
1. Before handing over your passport to the police, ask them to show their IDs: It is their duty to show IDs on request. Write down the names of the police into your notebook; if you are not familiar with Cyrillic characters, write down the serial numbers of the IDs. If the police ask you why you need their ID data, you can answer that "just in case something goes wrong you'll call the internal security division of the Interior Ministry" (the phone number of which, by the way, is 237-7585; another useful phone is the reception desk of the ministry, 222-6669). In case the police refuse to show their IDs, stop communicating with them, claiming they are "unknown persons in police uniform."
2. Speaking loudly and drawing public attention may work as well but it's not for everyone. Instead, you can be polite but firm in your confidence that you did not violate any Russian law and communicate this message clearly to the police several times during the encounter. Even if you do not have any documents with you, you still do not violate any law in this country. To my knowledge, Russian street police have no right to impose fines on pedestrians for violation of passport rules; it is the competence of at least the deputy head of the district police department.
3. Do not show any sign of impatience to the police, it will work against you. Instead, show that you have plenty of time for them and you will be delighted to go to the police station if needed (under the pretext that "they will for sure know that I'm right"). There is little chance, however, that the police would really take you to the police station, but if they do, refuse to talk without a representative from your consulate, even on the weekends.
4. If you are working in Moscow, it is useful to know that you are not under obligation to carry your work permit with you; instead, it should be with your employer. You may still want to carry a photocopy of it together with your passport and visa. Again, fines for violation of work permit rules are imposed by the officials of the Moscow Migration Committee and not by street police, so turn down any attempt to make you pay on this ground.
I hope this will be of help to somebody.
Valery Yakushev
Moscow
