Russians abroad are losing access to passport renewals and other consular services. Belarusians know what comes next.

In the summer of 2026, Russian authorities banned Russians abroad who have been convicted in absentia from receiving any consular services. The ban applies to anyone convicted under any article of the Criminal Code, as well as anyone with an administrative fine for “discrediting the army,” failing to label themselves a “foreign agent,” or working with an “undesirable organization.” In effect, many will face an illusory choice: return to Russia and serve their sentence, or live in another country without a foreign passport, since it can no longer be renewed. Because of this, the law has already been dubbed the law on “stripping citizenship.” Belarusian citizens who have left the country have been in a similar situation for three years already. In 2023, Alexander Lukashenko banned them from obtaining passports at embassies and consulates. Meduza spoke with them about life without a passport.

Sergei, 38, lives in Poland

My wife and I left Minsk in late 2021 to start a business in Poland. When the [full-scale] war began, we decided not to go back. In Belarus, we’d manufactured and sold electric scooters, kick scooters, and bicycles, and we wanted to expand that business into Europe — but the laws here turned out to be completely different: in Poland, you need a license to operate that kind of vehicle. So we switched fields. We’d always worked with Chinese factories, and we still do, but now we import household goods.

I live in Gdansk because we originally planned to work through sea shipments — there’s a port here — and because we wanted to live closer to nature. We lived in Warsaw for a while but didn’t like it; it’s a big, noisy city.

My passport expired at the end of 2023. In theory, I could go back to Belarus and get a new one — that would mean going to the consulate for special permission to return without a valid passport. I don’t want to risk it: there are many stories about people being pulled off buses, interrogated, and detained.

My residence permit made everything easier, but it expired a month ago, and a new one takes a long time to process. Wait times vary by region, and Gdansk is the slowest. A work-based residence permit takes about two to two and a half years; a business-based one takes even longer, about three years. Poland has handled this well, though: it issues a podróży document valid for one year that can be used for travel, and Belarusians get it free of charge through a simplified process. But it’s only valid together with a residence permit, so right now I can’t leave the country.

The expired passport hasn’t caused major problems so far. Once, a leasing company turned us down when our business tried to rent a car — we just put the contract in my wife’s name instead, and everything went fine. This year we took out another lease, and they didn’t even ask for my passport; all the contracts were handled using the residence permit.

We’re renting an apartment now. We wanted to take out a mortgage on a house but were turned down because of the expired residence permit — the bank was willing to accept two local documents instead of a Belarusian passport: the residence permit and the podróży document.

Another problem: I can’t get a power of attorney. We still own property in Belarus and would like to sell it rather than let it sit there as dead weight.

I’ve gotten used to living without a passport, but living without a residence permit is hard. I’m grateful to the Belarusian opposition in exile — thanks to their efforts, it’s now possible to get the podróży document through a simplified process and to replace an expired driver’s license.

I can’t really offer Russians advice, except to hope they’ll be treated the same way as Belarusians and given the chance to get, say, the podróży document through a simplified process if they live in Poland. And I’d wish them faster residence permit processing — not a three-year wait.

My wife’s documents are in order — her passport is valid until 2031. She has no plans to go to Belarus; nothing ties her there anymore, and her parents have died. My own mother and I don’t see each other. She lives in a village and doesn’t want to deal with getting a visa. She’s fine with my having left. She watches television, but she basically understands what’s really going on.

I miss Svietlahorsk, the town where I was born. I don’t much want to go back to Minsk, especially given what happened there after 2020. We lived in the Novaya Borovaya neighborhood, home to a lot of programmers and businessmen who supported political change. At the time, [the authorities] came down hard on our neighborhood — you’d walk out of your building and find riot police there, constantly asking where you were going, when you’d be back, checking your documents. What stuck with me was the total control, the constant threat of getting locked up for a few days. People grew scared, unhappy, withdrawn. Even though I never went to the protests, I remember that constant fear of being detained for no reason.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back, because I don’t really believe things will change for the better.

Dmitry, 46, lives in France

I left Belarus in June 2021, partly for political reasons — but overall, I’d long stopped seeing a future there for myself and my family. I went to France alone at first. I already had a residence permit, since I’d spent a lot of time in the country before moving there, and I started looking for work. My wife joined me six months later.

In Minsk, I worked at a tattoo studio, but when COVID hit, I had to find a different line of work and spent a while in forestry. Now I’ve gone back to tattooing — I’m registered as a sole proprietor and work for myself.

My Belarusian passport expired in April 2025. I could go back to Belarus to renew it, but there’s no guarantee I’d be able to leave again — no guarantee I wouldn’t be detained over my correspondence. I don’t have any critical problems in everyday life right now, since I have a 10-year residence permit valid until 2035; I actually got it after my passport had already expired. It all depends on the prefecture. In some regions, people wait years for a decision and end up suing the prefecture — and then there are cases like mine. After [the authorities] asked for a copy of a valid passport, I wrote back saying I had no way of getting one and asked them to process everything without it. They approved my request.

The main problem is that I can’t really travel normally by plane — I can’t just get up and fly somewhere for vacation or personal reasons. For now, we mostly drive to neighboring European countries, so [not having a passport] isn’t as noticeable day to day. It could obviously create more problems down the road.

I like France; the quality of life here is high. But this country hasn’t replaced Belarus — it’s just a different part of my life. What I miss most is Belarusian nature, the forests and rivers. France has beautiful nature too, but it’s different.

Nikolai, 35, lives in Poland

My wife, our child, and I left in December 2021. We sat down, talked it over, and decided Belarus wouldn’t offer our child anything good, and that my wife didn’t see room to grow there professionally. So we decided to move to Europe. Since my wife and I both have Polish roots, we quickly got Karta Polaka cards [which grant the right to obtain a residence permit in Poland] and later got residence permits.

My passport expired in January 2025, and I applied for a podróży document. Last year they issued these quickly, but now I’ve been waiting nine months with no word at all. I have pobyt stały status, but banks require a passport, so all my online accounts got blocked once mine expired. The only thing saving me is Revolut, where I passed verification using my pobyt stały status.

Just two months before Lukashenko’s decree [barring people from renewing documents abroad], I wrote to the consulate asking whether I could get my passport replaced. They told me to come to Belarus, where they’d issue a new one. I think they already knew the decree was coming and had stopped renewing anyone’s passport.

Recently, I tried to get them to confirm I hold a Belarusian [driver’s] license so I could replace it. They refused because my passport is expired. The only thing I got out of them was an official written refusal stating the reason. As I understand it, they can’t process any administrative request for me except issuing permission to return to Belarus.

My wife and I have never had any contact with the [Belarusian KGB], though she went to rallies a few times in Ashmyany, our hometown. She traveled home in 2025 and had no problems at the border. I don’t want to go, because I’ve already received summonses from the local draft office, and there’s no way to check whether I’m on a list of people barred from leaving the country.

My mother has visited me in Poland once. I avoid political topics with her, because she thinks that since Belarus isn’t at war with anyone, Lukashenko must be relatively good. I don’t want to bring it up, because it’s [easy] to end up in an argument.

My child is 10 and adapted very quickly. When we arrived, he went straight into kindergarten and then school; he picked up Polish fast and now speaks two languages. My own social circle is mostly Russian-speaking. Interestingly, some Poles now in their 40s studied Russian in school and still remember it — surprisingly.

In Belarus, I worked at Beltelecom, an internet provider. After we moved, I retrained as a web developer and now work freelance in that field. I like Poland better than Belarus — everything is more accessible, and you can go away for the weekend somewhere in Europe without a second thought. But that’s only when your documents are in order. Right now, I can’t leave Poland at all.

Viktor, 52, lives in Ukraine

I was born in Belarus, in the Gomel region, and worked as a welder my whole life. My mother moved to Ukraine in the ‘90s, and my younger brother was born there. I moved to Ukraine myself in 2018 and remarried. My ex-wife and our two children stayed behind in Belarus.

My Belarusian passport expired in 2022. I could have renewed it, but I didn’t know that could be done through the embassy. I wanted to go to Belarus, but prices had risen during COVID: a one-way bus ticket cost around 5,000 hryvnias, and I couldn’t afford the round trip. Then my work-based residence permit expired too, and I became an undocumented resident. There’s a war going on now, and I can’t leave — the police would immediately take me in for questioning — but I can’t get legal status either, because my passport is expired. So I’m stuck in limbo.

A TRC (territorial recruitment center) drafted my younger brother into the war in 2025. He’s 35 and holds a Ukrainian passport. Everyone back in Belarus assumes I’m fighting too. I once got in touch with my cousin, who’s retired now. I told him, “I’m at work.” He asked, “What, on the front line?” I asked if he was laughing at me. What kind of soldier am I?

When I went to the migration service, they told me, “Go home, get a new passport, and then we can legalize your status.” I said, “How do you imagine that, when my brother is fighting?” They said that if I were caught [by the Belarusian authorities], the least they’d do is exchange me for prisoners of war. In other words, if I ended up there now, whether in Russia or in Belarus, I might not even make it to a prison or a camp. They’d simply tear me apart, because I fully and completely support Ukraine and consider Lukashenko a tyrant, just like Putin.

Crossing the border is science fiction for me right now. I live in Kharkiv and rent an apartment; the most I can do is get to the nearest checkpoint within the region, where they check documents and that’s it. The police and the SBU would take me in and interrogate me, even though I have no incriminating material — not on my phone, not anywhere. With this mobilization going on, TRCs are everywhere, and I run from them. Once, they [TRC officers] took my bicycle after I got away — spite, for not catching me.

I see the bombing, I see people dying. There are constant strikes here now, day and night — drones and missiles. Just today [August 12, 2026], there were already two strikes. We don’t go to shelters; we just go down to the first floor of our building each time. And how is that supposed to work anyway, when the all-clear on an air raid siren sounds and then a minute later it’s announced again? Am I supposed to run down from the fourth floor every single time?

I’d gladly take my wife and leave — the Netherlands, Germany, France, Canada, anywhere I could live in peace and keep working. My wife is Ukrainian, from Donbas, and works in retail. Her documents are in order, but she won’t leave without me. And if our roles were reversed, I wouldn’t leave without her either.

I don’t use banks — I pay for everything in cash and get paid in cash. My salary, as you can imagine, isn’t much, just pennies. It covers rent and the gas and electric bills.

I don’t know how to get legal status. I’ve tried consulting lawyers, but it’s all just a way to drain your money, with no meaningful results — one consultation costs 3,000 hryvnias, and I simply can’t afford that. There are scammers and con artists everywhere, and I don’t trust them. I live in constant fear, just waiting for some kind of change for people like me. I know other people here in Kharkiv in the same situation, with expired documents.

I have two children in Belarus, a 16-year-old son and a 28-year-old daughter. My cousin and aunt are there too, but I don’t talk to them — they support Russia and Belarus, get everything from television, and don’t see what’s really happening. Of course it’s hard without my children, but I can’t force my way into their heads and explain what’s actually going on.

I love Ukraine, despite the madhouse and the bombing here. Why not consider it my homeland if I’m comfortable here? Home, if you’ll excuse the expression, is wherever your ass is warm. Besides, my mother is buried here, and my brother and nephews are here too. I don’t miss Belarus at all. As long as Lukashenko’s regime is in power, I don’t want to go back.

Ilya, 46, lives in Poland

I’m from Minsk. My wife, our son, and I left in February 2022 — I was afraid Belarus would get pulled into the war too. We went to Georgia first, for three months, to see how things were, then went back to Belarus and got visas for Poland. I work in IT, so getting a work visa wasn’t hard, since Poland had a program for attracting highly skilled specialists.

There was a lot of back-and-forth over whether to stay. Then mobilization began in Russia, rumors spread that it would happen in Belarus too, and I’m a reserve officer. We decided to go temporarily — but that “temporarily” turned into three and a half years.

I face risks in Belarus because I donated to organizations designated as extremist there, including the ”BYSOL Solidarity Fund.” Cooperating with that organization carries the risk of a criminal case and up to five years in prison.

After the 2020 protests, a lot of things were criminalized — it got almost absurd, with people detained over social media comments, over participating in neighborhood chat groups. Then things quieted down somehow; it seemed like the protests had been broken up and things had calmed down. But apparently the authorities decided to go after everyone. They started identifying people through photos, Facebook comments, and donations. It became clear these weren’t one-off actions meant to scare people — they genuinely wanted to reach every dissenter and participant in any kind of activity in 2020. Now, if you’ve spent a long time abroad, you’re guaranteed an interview with a KGB officer at the border. I don’t want to find out.

My Belarusian passport expired in the fall of 2024. I don’t expect anything good from Lukashenko, and I’m glad he can no longer harm me, that he can’t reach me. But not having a passport is very inconvenient — banking, travel, any contract you might need to sign are all at risk. Santander and Crédit Agricole told me they don’t open accounts without a passport. I went to several branches of the Polish bank PKO, and only the third one accepted my podróży document.

Credit to the Polish government for understanding the situation well. The podróży document replaces a passport in many cases — you can travel abroad with it, and visas can be put in it — and mine was renewed even though my passport had already expired. The Belarusian opposition in exile does a lot to help the diaspora and political refugees. They meet with heads of state, explain the situation, and push for specific laws and regulations. It’s largely thanks to them that local politicians distinguish between Belarus’s official authorities and the Belarusians who have left the country.

My wife and I are glad we got our son out. He’ll turn 18 soon, and the war still hasn’t ended; here, he definitely won’t be drafted or sent to the front. He finished eighth grade in Poland, learned Polish within a year, and enrolled in a technical college to study programming. The move was hard on him — he didn’t even get to say goodbye to his friends — and the first year was full of sadness and depression. Now he’s grown up and understands what’s happening in the world and why we left. He doesn’t have much desire to go back.

Our elderly parents stayed behind in Belarus. It’s depressing that I can’t go, but I hope it’s not forever — not for decades. The war needs to end, and then some kind of change will start. Or our leaders’ health will fail them.

In Poland, there’s no feeling of home, of certainty, of any real sense of your future, and at my age that’s not very comfortable anymore. On the plus side, you’re not afraid they’ll come for you, lock you up, or beat you with a baton. You don’t realize you’d been living in constant fear until you move abroad. Here there’s none of that — you can speak your mind freely, you don’t delete your message history or photos from your phone. You don’t have to choose between putting up with injustice and fighting it. You just live a normal life.

My advice to Russians: prepare for emigration in advance. Renew all your documents for the maximum possible term while you still can, make copies of everything, and get powers of attorney for relatives in case you need to handle things remotely. Choose a country that’s more accommodating toward emigrants and Russians and more understanding of the situation — Spain, for example, decided in 2026 to recognize expired Belarusian passports as valid.

Another piece of advice: stick together, and act collectively wherever possible.

It’s a shame the Russian opposition hasn’t managed to build any authoritative, centralized structures that could represent Russian émigrés, help solve their problems, and influence the policies of Western countries. That would help a great deal.