2 ALPEYEVA AND DZHALAGONIYA v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT THE FACTS I. THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE CASE A. Application no. 7549/09 1. Background 5. The first applicant is a Russian national who was born in 1951 and lives in Volzhskiy, in the Volgograd Region. 6. At the relevant time she was a Soviet national and lived in Kyrgyzstan. 7. In 1994 the first applicant applied to the Russian embassy in Bishkek for Russian citizenship. 8. In March 1994 she was granted Russian citizenship and the Russian embassy in Bishkek put a stamp in her Soviet passport to this effect. 9. Thereafter the first applicant moved to Russia. 10. On 14 July 2001 she obtained a new Russian “internal passport” (a citizen’s identity document for use inside Russia). 2. Seizure of the Russian passport 11. In 2006 the first applicant applied to the Federal Migration Service (FMS) for an “international passport” required for foreign travel. 12. On 11 April 2006 an official from the FMS seized her Russian passport, which was later destroyed. The FMS referred to a report of 26 January 2006 on a check carried out by the agencies of the interior, according to which the first applicant had never properly acquired Russian citizenship and therefore had no right to be in possession of a Russian passport. The report stated, in particular, that whereas the first applicant had been issued with a Russian passport on 14 July 2001, she was not registered in the database of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a person who had acquired Russian citizenship. Furthermore, according to a letter of 18 October 2015 from the Russian embassy in Kyrgyzstan, it had no records on her obtaining Russian citizenship either. Accordingly, she had been issued with a Russian passport erroneously in 2001. 3. Complaints to the prosecuting authorities 13. The first applicant complained to the prosecuting authorities. 14. On 15 June 2006 the Volzhskiy prosecutor’s office rejected the complaint. 15. In a response of 27 October 2006 the Volgograd Region prosecutor’s office stated that the FMS was not competent to seize passports, something which only the agencies of the interior could do; that the first applicant’s