QUESTION: Emergency situations: what to do if you lose your passport?

Losing a passport abroad is one of the most unpleasant situations that can happen to a traveler. The practice for "Emergency situations" states: make an exhaustive list of documents and deadlines, including visa validity periods, medical insurance, hotel bookings, and required vaccinations. This simple action prevents 90 percent of typical travel problems.

The first step when losing a foreign passport should be to contact the nearest local police station. They are required to issue you an official certificate of loss or theft of the document, which will become the main basis for further actions. Without this paper, obtaining a temporary identity document will be impossible.

With the police report, two recent standard-size photographs, and any surviving identity document (such as a domestic passport or driver's license), you need to go to the consular department of your country's embassy.

There, diplomatic mission staff will issue you a Return Certificate — a temporary document that gives you the legal right to cross the border and return to your homeland. The identity verification procedure can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days, so having digital copies of your passport in your cloud storage will significantly speed up the identification process.