The Federal Migration Service head, Konstantin Romodanovsky, accompanied the prime minister, providing the required explanations. He described an electronic system for registering foreigners, which is capable of keeping track of foreign nationals arriving in Russia, obtaining work permits or departing. The database also contains information on foreigners who violate Russian laws or regulations.

The system can filter registered foreigners by country of origin or by the Russian region where they stay, Romodanovsky explained.

The prime minister was shown such database functions as registering passports and other documents. "This system is called Russian Passport. The database includes 176 million documents, which is bigger than the Russian population but smaller than the number of passports," Romodanovsky said.

"Con artists like Chichikov would have liked it," Putin joked referring to a famous character from Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol.

The prime minister was also shown a system to provide electronic services, which is to go online on April 1. Any individual will be able to fill out his or her passport application online and email it to the migration service. People will no longer have to wait in long queues; it will be enough to come to a local migration office twice - to have their picture taken and to pick up the passport.

Finally, Mr Putin examined the photo equipment used for documents and even tried it. He had his picture taken and signed a standard form. These forms are then scanned and added to the database.