Vehicle registration plates of Russia

In Russia, the plate format has changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Soviet plates prior to 1982 were white-on-black. They had combination of four digits, grouped by two and three Cyrillic letters. Rear plate was square with letters located below the numbers. From those letters, first two indicated the region. For example, 75-63 КЛЖ combination referd to the car from Kaliningrad region. After 1982 a new black-on-white format for newly registered cars was adopted. The 1982 format differentiated privately owned from government owned cars and trucks (virtually all vehicles used for business, as well as all businesses belonged to the government). The government owned vehicles retained NN-NN LLL scheme while private vehicles used L NN-NN LL. The last two letters indicated regions or large cities. Largest cities usually had several two-letter codes to account for a larger number of cars. For example city of Kiev used КИ and ХТ codes while Kiev Oblast' region used КХ.

The current format uses a letter followed by 3 digits and two more letters. To improve legibility of the numbers for Russian cars abroad, only a small subset of Cyrillic characters that look like Latin characters are used (12 letters: А, В, Е, К, М, Н, О, Р, С, Т, У, Х). Finally, the region number (77, 99, 97, 177 and now 199 for Moscow, 78 and 98 for Saint-Petersburg) and letters "RUS" are included, as well as the national flag (the flag was not used on some of the earliest plates of this format). There is a different format for trailers (4 digits and 2 letters).

The standard size for the license plate is 520 mm by 110 mm.

Some vehicles, like trolleybuses, are not required to have license plates, because they can not leave the network they operate on and can be identified by number that is painted and is given by local public transport authority. Trucks and buses generally have their licence numbers painted on them in large letters on the rear of the vehicle, although they also bear licence plates.Fact|date=February 2007 Some autonomous regions are not required to have the flag on the licence plates.Fact|date=February 2007

Vehicles used by certain organisations or categories of person carry special plates:

* Police forces have special numbers on blue colored plates.
* Diplomatic cars have white characters on a red background. A number on the plate identifies the embassy to which they belong, assigned in order based on the date at which that country established diplomatic relations with Russia or the Soviet Union. For example, Britain is 001, the USA is 004, and Paraguay is 157.
* The Armed forces have white characters on a black background.
* 'Administrative' vehicles (such as buses, licensed taxis and licensed share taxis) have black characters on a yellow background.

There are special series (usually numbers starting with A) reserved for government officials (for example, A 001 AA usually belongs to the governor of the region). The license plates for federal government officials have a larger flag instead of the regional code.

Rich businessmen, prominent politicians and crime lords often use illegally acquired special licence plates (government or police) to get preferential treatment from the transport police and as a status symbol.Fact|date=February 2007

Runout problem

As per GOST provision, only 1,726,272 combinations may be issued within one administration unit. In certain regions, the amount of vehicles exceeds that number, and the combination may not be reused after a vehicle was taken off the registration. All this creates an issue of running out of numbers.

A short-term solution was introducing more codes for those regions. Thus, some regions have 2 codes issued to them, Moscow Oblast has 3, and the city of Moscow has 5 codes. But this does not fully solve the problem, as the authorities may eventually run out of regional codes because any code higher than 199 will not fit without changing the standardized layout of the plate.

Introduction of new style license plate is being considered as a future solution.

Regional codes

ee also

*Vehicle registration plate
*European vehicle registration plates

External links

* [http://www.ussrlicenseplates.com USSR License plates]