Ukraine’s visa-free regime with the United Arab Emirates entered into force on Dec.31.
Now Ukrainians who have biometric passports are allowed to visit the United Arab Emirates up to 30 days without a visa. The same rule applies for United Arab Emirates citizens who want to visit Ukraine.
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko was one of the first to react to Ukraine’s bilateral relations improvement.
“Ukrainians are now allowed to travel to 85 countries without a visa,” he wrote on his Twitter account on Dec. 31.
“The year of 2017 became a breakthrough year in visa-free travel for Ukraine once European Union countries opened up their borders to us.”
During Ukraine’s first six months of visa-free travel with EU countries more than 355,000 Ukrainians traveled to EU. The exceptions are the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland that decided not to allow Ukrainians into their borders without a visa.
Poroshenko signed the visa-free memorandum with United Arab Emirates Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum back in November.
Svyatoslav Tsegolko, Poroshenko’s spokesperson, greeted the memorandum as a step forward in the bilateral relations saying that it will eventually increase the number of Ukrainians visiting the United Arab Emirates.
“This is good news for Ukrainian tourists. Only in 2016, more than 112,000 Ukrainians visited the United Arab Emirates,” he wrote on his Facebook page on Nov. 2.
Before the visa-free regime, a Ukrainian citizen had to pay $82 to get a visa to the United Arab Emirates.
Ukraine’s passport ranks 33rd out of 193 United Nations countries in the Global Passport Power Ranking index 2017. Ukraine has visa-free and visa-on-arrival agreements with more than 120 countries. In comparison, Germany, which ranks first in the passport index, has 161 of such bilateral agreements.
