Border Guards Will Not Let Ukrainians Abroad With Internal Passport If They Are Not From War Zone

Border guards will not let Ukrainian citizens abroad with an internal passport if they are not from the war zone.

This was announced to Ukrainian News Agency by the speaker of the State Border Guard Service Andrii Demchenko.

"By the decision of the government, which has acted and acted before, the list of documents by which the state border can be crossed is clearly defined, and there is no internal passport in this list. At the same time, we saw a de facto humanitarian catastrophe at the border, with thousands of citizens and thousands of vehicles trying to cross the border. Service centers, as a rule, did not work in order to issue proper documents to people. Then a decision was made to let citizens pass either according to internal documents, or according to documents by which it was possible to identify a person," he said.

The speaker added that at the moment, citizens should adhere to the procedure for crossing the border with a foreign passport.

Children can cross the border either with a passport or with a birth certificate.

At the same time, if a person travels from an area where hostilities are underway, then border guards can make separate decisions on such citizens about passing abroad with internal passports.

"We recommend that citizens from other regions not speculate on individual decisions of border guards and still have proper documents for crossing the border," Demchenko said.

According to him, if people who crossed the border with internal documents want to be legalized abroad, then they should understand that internal passports will not be accepted there.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, the Verkhovna Rada increased the staff of the State Border Guard Service by 7,000 people from 53,000 to 60,000 employees.