1 Hour?

From the MT:
"Russia to Offer One-Hour Passport Service to Crimea Residents"

Russia will offer an express passport-processing service in Crimea on Monday to provide inhabitants with the document within an hour of applying, the government said, as Moscow seeks to promote its citizenship on the peninsula it annexed in spring. The Federal Migration Service said in an online statement that it would hold a "demonstration" of the express service at its offices in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol. Any Crimea resident wishing to obtain a Russian passport who shows up by 11 a.m. on Monday will be given the document within an hour of filling out the forms, state-run Vesti.ru website reported. After Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, it proclaimed all inhabitants to be its citizens and gave those who wished to decline Russian passports a mid-April deadline to submit a written refusal, migration service chief Konstantin Romodanovsky was quoted as saying by Vesti.ru. About 3,000 people submitted statements by the deadline, Romodanovsky said in the report, adding that residents who refused a Russian passport could end up facing prosecution on administrative charges. By late July, about 1.5 million Crimea residents had received Russian passports, state news outlet RIA Novosti quoted Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets as saying. The report added that the total number of passport-eligible adults living on the peninsula is about 2 million. Romodanovsky has said that if the Sevastopol "pilot" project is a success, a similar express service may be offered throughout Russia, RIA Novosti reported, apparently referring to the issuance of passports to Ukrainians who have moved across the border to escape the violence in the east of their country.

^ First I don't see the Russians being able to fulfill the 1 hour service. I think Russians would be confused by it and those officials supposed to get it done won't be able to cope. I assume they mean on the Russian internal passport and not the biometric Russian international passport. Russians need lines. It's part of their DNA (and their history.) I'm not taking about long lines outside of stores because of lack of consumer goods - although that is part of their history too. I'm taking about their need to make bureaucracy even in the oddest of places - each requiring a line and lots of waiting. They have "convenient stores" that can hold maybe 2 people at a time and yet have 3 different cashiers for the different sections of the store and you need to wait in a line. I have met many Russians who think waiting long periods of time for anything means the item, product, etc they are getting is better than something that was "easy" to get. I like how Russia made those not wanting Russian citizenship to file official notification by a certain date. The Soviets did the same thing in different times of the annexations and those that didn't "willingly" apply for Russian citizenship was places on a list and then sent to Siberia never to be heard from again. I wouldn't put it past the current Government to do the same thing with these "trouble-makers." Forcing people to submit or else is not the democratic way - but it tends to be the Russian way. ^

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/russia-to-offer-one-hour-passport-service-to-crimea-residents/504502.html