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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Poland has detained a man trying to cross its border using a driving licence issued by the Soviet Union – a country that has not existed for over 30 years. He has been referred to court for using an improper documents.
The Polish border guard reported this week that the incident occurred at the border crossing with Ukraine in the village of Malhowice on Friday.
While they were inspecting the documents of a 62-year-old Ukrainian citizen who was seeking to cross from Poland into Ukraine, he presented them with a driver’s licence (pictured above) issued in 1989 by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
“Under current law, such a license does not authorise driving,” wrote the border guard. Given that the Soviet Union, which was dissolved in 1991, no longer exists, it is “not a party to the Vienna Convention on Road Traffic”, which regulates international road traffic, they added.
The man was therefore handed over to the police and he will be referred to court for punishment.
The incident is at least the third time this year that Ukrainians – who are Poland’s largest immigrant group – have been discovered by the Polish authorities to be using Soviet driving licences.
One case was reported at the Medyka border crossing in August while another occured during a traffic stop by police in the Polish coastal city of Gdynia in March.
“Officers informed the man that the USSR collapsed in 1991, making his document invalid,” reported local police headquarters at the time.
The Soviet driving licence presented by a Ukrainian drive to police in Gdynia.
The Soviet Union existed from 1922 to 1991 and was made up of various republics, including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Poland was never itself part of the USSR, but was part of the so-called Soviet Bloc of countries under Moscow-imposed communist rule for decades after World War Two.
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: BOSG (under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 PL)
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
