Passport Control At Belarus-Russia Border: What It Looks Like

The Russian Federation has imposed the border zone regime at the border with Belarus since yesterday.

Euroradio made a journey to Vorsha to see whose passports the Russian border guards check.

The border guards stopped every car going from Belarus to Russia by the E30 road. They didn’t check the documents of the people going from Russia to Belarus. Besides, they organized something similar to a border crossing checkpoint, but the actual check was carried out a little short of it. The journalists went through the check with no problem.

The diesel trains from Vorsha in Belarus to the Krasnoye station in Russia go twice a day. The first one departs at 9.30. The passengers wishing to go further should change the train for the one going to Smolensk, in Krasnoye. They are met by border guards at the platform, as well as the passengers who already arrived.

There’s no infrastructure to conduct the border control at the station. The people in green uniform just wait for the passengers near the first wagon of the train. They don’t check the passports thoroughly – just look through them. Still, a queue appears.

The people with the Russian red and the Belarusian blue passports are let go quickly. As for other documents, the border guards take a closer look on those. They stopped a man in a white-blue-red cap before us; he had to show additional documents. However, when the journalists tried to video-record this, the border guards interfered and forced the journalists to delete the video and all the photos.

The residents of the village of Ziuzki at the Russian-Belarusian border zone say that nothing significantly changed for them on February 6. They are more concerned that the residents of the neighbouring Belarus will have to obtain certificates and pay taxes in order to have a right to pick mushrooms. As for the border, they say, everything is always changing.