REUTERS
Standard passports already issued to Ukrainians will remain in place, while officials recommend that Ukrainians switch to plastic ID cards.
E-services development manager at the Ministry for Digital Transformation Mstyslav Banik has said there will be no digitalization of paper passports in Ukraine, so the ministry recommends that people switch to ID cards.
"There will be no digitization of passports since tens of millions have been issued in Ukraine, and they are all paperback. It's almost unrealistic to process such colossal amounts of data and verify it, given there was no data exchange between various state registries. Therefore, we recommend that everyone switch to ID cards," he told UNIAN in an interview.
According to Banik, for those who are not willing to switch to ID cards, there is a biometric passport for foreign travel, which allows them using all state services.
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Background
On March 30, 2021, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's parliament, passed legislation allowing the use ofe-passports, displayed via a Diia app, on equal footing with actual passports.
The law comes into force on August 23, 2021. Therefore, state institutions and private organizations will not be able to refuse to accept such documents.
The ministry launched e-passports in the Diia app in April 2020.