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At least in some countries in Schengen area they check both passports on the outbound travel to Russia, e.g. in Narva, Estonia („You don’t seem to have Russian visa, do you have another passport?“)

However, you don’t have to be very smart and sophisticated to simply choose another route and use connection in Istanbul to avoid this check…

> they check both passports on the outbound travel to Russia, e.g. in Narva, Estonia

Who is "they"?

If "they" is the airline, then physically show them the Russian passport: they don't record this information, they only need to see it to confirm that they won't have to fly you back (for free?) to your departing location.

If border control (again: by flying), simply saying "my flight is to the UK" works.

>Who is "they"?

Narva is a pedestrian and car crossing. EU has a border with Russia/Belarus.

> If border control (again: by flying), simply saying "my flight is to the UK" works.

FYI in many places (not everywhere, rarely in Europe) border control will look at your boarding pass too.

Using the passport to book the ticket, and using the passport to go through immigration are completely distinct though.

When travelling we can book with whatever passport, but we need to be more careful during immigration.

I think what this means is that she used her Czech passport when leaving a country, and used the Russian passport when entering Russia (Thus leaving no trace of her entering the EU as a Russian national).

That's far from "sophisticated tradecaft" though. For instance a large % of Argentinians have double nationality (Myself included) and we do this all the time when travelling to Europe.

That's what any sane dual citizen would do. Use your Schengen country passport within Schengen and your home country passport when entering your home country. Maybe you wouldn't go to the lengths of using two different passports on one flight (you'd show your Russian passport when boarding a flight to Russia) but if you did, it wouldn't be that weird...

> Thus leaving no trace of her entering the EU as a Russian national

Computer systems of face recognition deployed everywhere would want to say something about that bright plan

> It’s generally illegal in most countries to use another country’s passport within the country your passport is from.

It's not generally illegal. Some countries have that requirement but those are generally countries that are particularly strict (e.g. you mentioned Germany and Argentina but they're both countries famous for unusually strict nationality laws; Germany generally strips people of their nationality if they acquire a foreign nationality, Argentina on the other side makes it impossible to renounce your citizenship at all).

Many (most?) countries do not require you to show any passport when exiting the country. (But if you’re traveling by air, then the next country you enter will likely share your passport details with the country you just departed.)

Can you give an example? Sounds strange to me. Even within Schengen area there can be temporary border checks and you usually need to identify yourself when leaving it.

In-shengen border controls are extremely easy to bypass, and if you travel a lot you know exactly where they are (especially since it is quite rare). Baltic countries have no checks at all at the borders, so you can go Sweden to Finland, Finland to Estonia, Estonia all the way down to Poland without any checks at all, easy. I know there's often a check at the France / Spain border, but I also know they only check busses and rarely any cars, so you can just either drive through with a rental car or just walk over (I once got my ID stolen and could not get over with a bus, so I hitchhicked / walked from Nice to Barcelona).

Those in-Schengen checks for buses and so on are largely just "do you have a valid passport?" and I'm not aware of any real checks of visa status, overstay checks, etc.

If you get caught without a passport, you get detained though. If you've forgotten your passport somewhere, someone else can take it to an airport (or a physical border) and the border control at the airport can then confirm your identity.

You only need to show an id, not a passport, right?

Either is fine, yeah.

> In-shengen border controls…

I‘m talking about temporary border controls that any country within the area may implement in certain circumstances according to the agreement. They are not the norm, Schengen is supposed to have only an external border.

You can trivially head from Irun to Hendaye.

No one checked my passport going from Germany to Poland or Poland to France this past week by air.

Per the EU’s website, Romania and Bulgaria don’t check when flying between them.

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/entry-exit/eu-c...

Examples/source? According to this stack overflow question, the US is (fairly) unique in not having immigration exit checks.

https://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/122289/why-don-t-...

The UK doesn't have exit checks.

Of the ~50 countries I've been to in the past 10 years, The UK is the only one I remember which I did not need to show any ID when leaving. I thought it was strange because this is just one way countries catch overstays.

They get the records from the airlines. They don’t need to pay someone to stamp passports at the border to know who is overstaying.

Sure (and I'm not sure if that's actually how it works), but the border control also physically stops someone from leaving after they've overstayed. If someone has overstayed, they just go to the airport and hop on a plane with no consequences.

Some countries do fine overstayers, but UK is quite happy for people to leave with no penalty, it just doesn’t want them to come back again afterwards.

If someone overstays without a good reason then they are probably not entering the UK again for a long time.

The consequences are almost worse without the exit controls because overstayers will waste money on a flight only to get turned around at the border - assuming they don’t need a visa or ETA.

But what’s the point of catching an overstay if they’re leaving already? It’s more important to catch them when they try to re-enter (at which point you could have collected data from airlines to estimate whether they previously overstayed).

Exit checks are pretty pointless if there’s no violation that would lead to enforcement other than deportation (since the traveler is already self-deporting).

Deportation is just the end result. Fines, blacklisting, even imprisonment is possible in many countries.

So you keep them from leaving and imprison them in your country (essentially paying for their upkeep and rendering them useless for your economy). And you do that to solve the problem of illegal immigration.

It’s so stupid it sounds like a policy some right wingers in my country might actually want to make reality.

Britain has a fairly unique attitude, it must be left-over from the empire - best summed up as "this is the garden of Eden, and the worst punishment is exile'

When the 15 year old girl joined Isis, and then subsequently re-appeared in a refugee camp with a newborn, there was little desire to arrest her and figure out if she is guilty or a victim. We just took away her British passport and washed our hands of her. I thought the government would at least rescue the baby, but apparently nobody cared and it perished in the inhumane conditions of the refugee camp.

This is somewhat unique - for example Russia could come after you, or arrest you on entry, but they don't have this idea of exile as punishment.

You sure they don't?

As in, 'you have 2 days to GTFO, or we'll land you in prison for a few years to think of your actions'.

Happened many, many times since the start of this horrific war and many times before.

Source: I'm one of the lucky ones who managed to GTFO from Russia and find a job abroad.

Also, Russia is [contemplating](https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/04/25/russia-reportedl....) stopping issuing passports abroad - to try and catch the 'undesirables' again. Which would leave many people de-facto stateless. This is what Belarus did quite a while ago, by the way.

I believe the idea of not issuing passports is the opposite -> to get people to come back to Russia where they can face consequences?

"Either you stay the F out and become de-facto stateless, or you're going to prison". Simple as that.

I'm actually pretty surprised that Russia didn't do it yet, as Belarus did a while ago.

It tends to be the opposite. The UK is so strict about overstays that it doesn’t need to fine anybody to enforce the rules.

The countries that fine people are usually (not always) more open to allowing them back in again.

I’m not aware of countries that imprison overstayers, although I’m sure there must be some. Detainment awaiting deportation yes, but usually if you show up at a border and try to leave after overstaying most countries will not interfere with your exit (with or without a fine).

It tends to be the opposite. The UK is so strict about overstays that it doesn’t need to fine anybody to enforce the rules.

The countries that fine people are usually (not always) more open to allowing them back in again.

I’m not aware of countries that imprison overstayers, although I’m sure there must be some. Detainment awaiting deportation yes, but usually if you show up at a border and try to leave after overstaying most countries will not interfere with your exit (with or without a fine).

If someone has overstayed you might want to note that down in case they come for another stay, right?

if you don't get any record of them leaving, from a manned border crossing or an airline reporting to you, then they've overstayed

You can also assume the first record of them entering another country is the date they left your country, since a person cannot be two places at once.

Well, they can immediately charge a fee (personal experience) and also it may be applicable for other matters in-flight.. let's say you're applying for a visa but have overstayed the current one. If they don't check until re-entry, they wouldn't catch this

Maybe it's a requirement for for air travel only? Why do all those countries bother? Surely they don't all have exit visa requirements?

When taking the Chunnel recently there are two passport checks on the way to the train, leaving UK and then 20 ft later entering France.

Canada

They regularly check people flying to certain destinations. Catch a flight to Colombia from Miami and you'll find the friendly Border Patrol C̶u̶s̶t̶o̶m̶s̶ agents in the jetway.

> “ sophisticated tradecraft “ lol what?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_techniques

> “ sophisticated tradecraft “ lol what?

I feel that there was a huge loss of competence - our security services are far too busy chasing around lone terrorists with low-tech tools and no op-sec.

The military industrial complex is so deep in grift it can only produce enough weapons to fight third world countries with minimal losses