The Ukrainian international passport follows international standards. The first Ukrainian passports (replacing the previous Soviet Union passport type) were introduced on 4 June 1994, while the machine-readable passports with two machine-readable strings at the bottom of the first page first appeared in 1997. The current Ukrainian international passport is a biometric one. If, based on religious beliefs, a citizen does not wish to receive a biometric passport, he/she can apply for a non-biometric one, providing a written statement before applying for the document.