Russia's FSB moves to scrap border checks with annexed Ukrainian territories
Russia's Federal Security Service is preparing to abolish the border-zone regime separating Russia from annexed Ukrainian territories, even though Russian forces do not fully control the areas in question.
According to the independent Russian investigative outlet Agentstvo, the FSB has drafted orders that would cancel its own earlier departmental rules establishing a border zone in the Rostov and Voronezh regions, as well as in annexed Crimea. Those earlier rules required travelers heading toward the annexed Ukrainian territories to undergo checks resembling those at an international border crossing.
The FSB justified the move by pointing to Russia's completed annexation of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk "people's republics" and the Kherson region. In Crimea, however, a border zone will still apply to the Black Sea islands that Russia considers its own.
Background
Russia declared the annexation of Ukraine's Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions in 2022, following its earlier annexation of Crimea in 2014. Despite these claims, Russian forces still do not fully control any of the four regions — only the Luhansk region has been almost entirely seized.
By eliminating the border-zone checks, the FSB is formally treating the annexed areas as ordinary domestic territory, even though actual control on the ground remains incomplete.
