Starting from Sept. 1, Ukrainians will have to declare their foreign passport upon entry to Belarus, according to a statement by the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine on Aug. 21.
The new requirement is part of a partial suspension of the agreement between the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Belarusian government on visa-free travel for citizens.
This new law is expected to enhance the security of Ukrainian travelers in many ways such as preventing document falsification, according to Andriy Demchenko, the spokesperson of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine. A foreign passport is considerably more difficult to counterfeit than a domestic passport in Ukraine, according to the spokesperson.
Over the past seven months the Ukrainian border patrol has received 300 falsified passports, more than 20 passports belonging to the wrong people, and over 1,300 invalid passports. The numbers specifically refer to domestic passports in the form of booklets, which the Cabinet of Ministry is actively trying to put out of use.
Ukrainian authorities say that the use of foreign passports will be less time-consuming when crossing the border.
Ukrainians living near the border, however, will be unaffected by the new regulations. In addition, any Ukrainian citizen without a foreign passport that is still in Belarus after Sept.1 will also be able to return to Ukraine following the old procedure which accepts internal passports and birth certificates as verification.
Ukrainians living in Belarus also have the option to apply for a foreign passport in the Ukrainian embassy in Minsk or the consulate in Brest.
After a similar law was passed in Ukraine exclusively with Russia, nearly 15 people were refused to cross the border the very next day.
Ukraine’s State Border Guard Service initially planned to enforce the new requirement earlier but decided to postpone it to the beginning of September in order to give more time for issuing foreign passports.
