ALPEYEVA AND DZHALAGONIYA v. RUSSIA JUDGMENT
21
satisfied that the decisions may thus be regarded as being “in accordance
with the law”.
(ii) Procedural safeguards
118. The Court further notes that the applicants availed themselves of
the possibility to contest the decisions of the FMS before the domestic
courts, which examined their claims at two levels of jurisdiction. After
several sets of proceedings, by a final decision of 7 August 2009, the
Volgograd Regional Court dismissed the first applicant’s claim concerning
the FMS’s inaction in relation to issuing her with a new passport. On
6 December 2010, by way of a final decision, the Kostroma Regional Court
dismissed the second applicant’s appeal concerning the refusal to exchange
his passport. Although the applicants were dissatisfied with the outcome of
those proceedings, they did not allege any procedural shortcomings (cf. K2,
cited above, § 56). Accordingly, the Court is satisfied that the applicants
were afforded the procedural safeguards required by Article 8 of the
Convention.
(iii) Whether the authorities acted diligently and swiftly
119. The Court observes that the first applicant moved to Russia after
the Russian embassy in Bishkek put a stamp in her Soviet passport
confirming that she had obtained Russian citizenship in March 1994 and has
been living there since then. The second applicant has been living in Russia
since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The applicants considered
themselves Russian citizens, exercised the rights and duties of such citizens,
and were provided with documents to this effect. An internal Russian
passport was issued to the first applicant on 14 July 2001, and an insert for
the second applicant’s Soviet passport certifying his Russian citizenship was
issued on 23 December 1998, and subsequently a Russian passport was
issued to him on 19 February 2002.
120. However, when in 2006 the first applicant applied to the FMS for
an international passport, an FMS official seized her Russian passport on
the grounds of a report of 26 January 2006 on a check carried out by the
agencies of the interior. The report concluded that she had never properly
acquired Russian citizenship, as no records to this effect had been found in
the database of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or in the Russian embassy in
Kyrgyzstan, and therefore she had no right to be in possession of a Russian
passport.
121. As regards the second applicant, when, in compliance with the
requirements of the domestic law, he applied to exchange his passport, as he
had turned 45, this was refused on the following grounds: (i) although the
applicant could have obtained Russian citizenship if he had been living in
Russia on 6 February 1992, the date the 1991 Russian Citizenship Act had
entered into force, no proof of this had been obtained by the check carried