Foreigners, you can't own Russia's borderlands in Crimea anymore

Vladimir Putin has expanded the list of border territories where foreign citizens and enterprises are forbidden from owning land. First reported by the newspaper Vedomosti on March 25, the president’s executive order was originally published at an online government portal on March 20.

The real-estate restrictions apply to Crimea’s border regions and eight of Sevastopol’s nine municipalities, as well as Kerch, Yalta, Yevpatoriya, and other coastal cities throughout the peninsula. The prohibition doesn’t extend to three regions in Crimea: Pervomaisky, Krasnogvardeisky, and Belogorsky (all areas that do not border Ukraine or the Black Sea).

Putin also extended the restrictions on property ownership to Russia’s Astrakhan and Kaliningrad municipalities.

Russia first imposed prohibitions on foreign ownership of border territory in 2011. Crimea and Sevastopol, which Russia annexed in 2014, were not previously affected by these restrictions.