MANIPULATION: Men and women with permanent residence permits abroad are not allowed to leave Ukraine

There is information being circulated online that from June 1, 2024, the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine does not allow leaving Ukraine for people who are traveling abroad for permanent residence for the first time or already have a permanent residence permit in another country. Users add that this rule applies to everyone, including women and children. In this way, the Ukrainian authorities supposedly turn Ukraine into a “ghetto”, while the true borders of Ukraine from 1991 supposedly do not exist at all, since the delimitation and demarcation of borders with Belarus and Russia have been suspended.

This is manipulation. The restriction on leaving with a permanent residence permit abroad applies only to men of conscription age, not to women and children.

In reality, users have distorted the information and are only helping Russian propaganda. Below, we explain who is actually prohibited from leaving and why the demarcation process of Ukraine’s borders with Russia and Belarus is suspended.

Leaving Ukraine for permanent residence

On June 4, 2024, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine reported that from June 1, Ukraine canceled the exception for men with dual citizenship to leave the country. According to the embassy, previously, men of conscription age with dual Ukrainian-American citizenship could enter Ukraine and then freely leave, but only if they had deregistered from their place of residence in Ukraine and registered a new place of residence in the U.S.

The representative of the State Border Guard Service, Andrii Demchenko, confirmed that men aged 18 to 60 with dual citizenship are subject to the same mobilization rules as others, particularly because dual citizenship is prohibited in Ukraine. Therefore, if a man has, for example, both American and Ukrainian citizenship, he is considered Ukrainian. In fact, this rule has been in effect in Ukraine since 2001, when the Law on Citizenship of Ukraine was adopted. According to Demchenko, border guards have repeatedly identified Ukrainians who pretended to be foreigners at the border.

However, neither the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine nor Andrii Demchenko mentioned any prohibition on leaving for women and children. It concerns only men of conscription age.

Delimitation and demarcation of borders with Belarus and Russia

Border delimitation is the definition of the location and direction of the state border, agreed upon with neighbors and fixed in a specific agreement, which describes the passage of the border line between two countries. Based on this, demarcation is carried out, i.e., the physical marking of the state border line and the installation of border markers.

The agreement on establishing the state border between Ukraine and Belarus was signed back in 1997. The agreement on direct demarcation was adopted only in 2014, although the first border marker in the Chernihiv region on the Ukraine-Belarus border was installed as early as 2013. Overall, the state border between Ukraine and Belarus is about 1,084 km long, so, according to experts, the demarcation process was expected to take at least seven years. Former Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Ihor Bondarenko reported in October 2022 that by the fall of 2021, the border with Belarus was almost fully demarcated.

In 2004, Ukraine also ratified the Agreement on the State Border with Russia and signed the Demarcation Agreement in 2010. However, Russia blocked this process throughout the entire time. Therefore, on June 16, 2014, during the Russian invasion, the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine instructed the government to unilaterally demarcate the border with Russia. Thus, users’ statements are unfounded, as Russia deliberately blocked this process and subsequently launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In addition to Belarus and Russia, Ukraine has also not completed the demarcation of its border with Moldova.

Ukrainian borders as of 1991

The suspension of demarcation does not mean that Ukraine has no defined borders, and statements about returning to the borders of 1991 are “just talks”. Back in 1991, Ukraine adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty, according to which the territories of the former Ukrainian SSR became independent Ukraine. Currently, the state border of Ukraine is defined by the Ukrainian Constitution and laws, as well as international agreements.

Later, Ukraine’s independence within the borders of the former Ukrainian SSR was recognized by other countries, including the Russian Federation. Therefore, all claims of the “absence” of Ukrainian borders are false and only serve Kremlin propagandists.