How to travel visa free to Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Moldova

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Hey! What's up everybody? So welcome back to another episode of tip Thursday with
me, Conor Clyne, the Language Tsar and PureVPN. Go check out their link in the
description for virtual private networks and in this episode I'm speaking to you
from Brest in Belarus. I'm just here for a few days on the visa free and that is
the topic of this video. A lot of you have been asking me about the visa-free
regimes in this region so that's gonna be Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova so
let's get into today's video!
So today I'm speaking to you from the very appropriately named Sovietskaia
Street here in the center of Brest, Belarus which is on the border with
Poland and I'm gonna give you a little bit of an overview of the visa-free
regimes in this region. Now I looked at my YouTube analytics to see where most
of you actually are from, where you're residing and I saw that most of you are
from North America and Europe so in this video I'm gonna deal primarily with
people who hold those passports and so if you come from another country that has a
different regime so you should go and look that up yourselves. You probably
don't need as much at times. So just bear that in mind for the information in this
video. The first country I'm gonna start with is Ukraine and they have a very
similar regime to actually identical basically regime to that of Moldova
which is that you can travel with your passport visa free for 90 days
every 180 so that's in effect 3 months every 6 months so you don't have to do
anything in advance. You just show up with your passport as long as you don't
exceed those limits at that limit in terms of days that's 90 every 180
you're fine. You can travel around wherever you want in the country no
restrictions there nothing unusual. So that's pretty good. Those two countries
out of the four of them are by far the the best if you have a European passport or
a North American passport like Canadian or American. Now the country that I'm in
right now which is Belarus, they have a more restricted regime but they have
been opening things up recently in the last two years and they have made it
easier for you to come if you hold a European or North American
passport. So how it works is that you will have visa-free if you fly into
Minsk Airport. That's the capital, the National Airport and you can travel
anywhere in Belarus for up to five days visa free. You don't have to do much
more than just show up with your passport. You do have to have insurance that
is valid in the Republic of Belarus and in reality that just means that you buy
it at the airport. I paid six euros. That's probably
around seven, eight US dollars for the insurance in the airport. It was really
smooth. I went straight to the counter. It was on the left when I arrived in the
airport just before I went through passport control and there I bought the
insurance for the five days visa free. Now remember it's five days that includes
the day that you arrive and the day you leave so in effect it's four
nights that you get visa-free in Belarus if you fly to Minsk National Airport.
Now the other ways to come to Belarus visa-free are to come to two regions on
the border with Poland. Now I'm here in one of them which is the Brest region
so I'm in the town of Brest and we're right on the border. In fact the town is
basically the border town and you can come here also for well actually you can
come for technically ten days visa-free to Brest but you cannot leave the
designated area around Brest itself so you cannot go to Minsk. You cannot go to
any other part of Belarus. Now in reality if you come for more than five days then
you need to register with the police. It's not as simple as flying into Minsk
National Airport where you just show up with your passport and you buy the
insurance, you actually have to arrange some documents in advance to come here
to Brest and the reality is that I could only find one operator online who
did it at least simply who had an easy website to use and they limited it to
five days so even though the law says ten days in reality I could only get five
days visa-free and I had to buy a tour that included a taxi ride in that so that
was a little bit more expensive so in addition to the insurance I actually had
to buy ... I'm stopping for the red light because in Belarus you can't
jaywalk. There are fines. It's strictly enforced. So yeah I had to buy an addition to the
insurance I had to buy some tours and I got a taxi voucher included in that so
the whole thing came to sixty polish zloty. I paid it in zloty so that's
approximately fifteen euros and that works out I guess around just a little
bit under twenty US dollars. They then sent me the documents pretty quickly I
think I had all the documents within an hour or so and then I had to present
them to the border guards. I did fill out an immigration card and I'm
supposed to keep half of it until I leave but the second time I actually came
on this visa-free regime to Brest, they did not give me the immigration card
back. They said I don't need it so that will be interesting for
me to conclude with when I leave here and figure out if that is actually the
case and if I can, yeah, exit without a fine or any problems but they told me
with the five-day visa-free regime that I was saying just for five days and that
I didn't need to present that immigration card that slip did you fill
it on the exit so I said you're limited to the Brest region. Now the third
option, third way to come visa free to Belarus is to go to Grodno which is
a border town close to Lithuania and to Poland on the border and that's
pretty similar to here. Technically, it's ten days if you stay more than five days
you're got to register with the police and when I went there I registered. I
bought a ticket. I got a tour and I got similar documents sent to me so that's
all pretty pretty standard in terms of its consistent basically it's the same
as here in Brest. So they're the three ways to come to Belarus visa-free.
Now the big country Russia, Mother Russia so that is by far the most limited in
terms of visa free if you are a European or North American passport holder and
that basically only has one option normally to go visa-free and that's via a
ferry, a passenger ferry at certain ports for example at Kaliningrad, St. Petersburg
or Vladivostok you can go for up to 72 hours visa free but you are very
limited you have to stay in accommodation approved by a tour agent
and you can only stay for up to 72 hours and you have to arrive by ferry so obviously
you cannot fly into into Russia. Now there will be a derogation to that of
course for the football or soccer World Cup coming up here in 2018 so for a
limited period, about six weeks around at the time of the tournament if you have a
fan ID so you bought a ticket to some of the games you had all that
approved then you can actually go and visit Russia visa-free for the duration
of the tournament and that's just with your fan ID and your passport so that's
gonna make a lot easier. So people do not have need to get a visa if they want
to visit Russia for the football World Cup. Two other tips I want to give you
about visa-free with respect to Russia are firstly if you fly to Minsk here
in Belarus and you think okay I'm gonna arrive by plane and that plane is not
direct and it goes via an airport in Russia, you need to be aware of that you
will need to change terminal and or at least you have to change
the planes of course in Moscow and they will make you change terminal from the
international terminal to domestic so Russia and Belarus have an agreement that
it basically counts as a domestic flight and that means you got to change
you got to enter Russia basically if you fly to Moscow with the intention of coming
here and on the visa free and you will not be allowed into Russia if you do not
have a visa and that means that like what happened my friend, Andy, who's been
in some of these videos that he flew, I think he was gonna be ... just have to
change planes in the international terminal in Moscow and he would not need a visa
because for transits it's fine, he was told when you arrived in Moscow Airport
that he needed a Russian visa in order to catch his flight to Minsk and they
refused him entry and he actually had to get back on a plane and leave Moscow and
not go to Minsk and the next day he had to fly there so that was really a pain in
the ass can we say. So just be aware of that. The second tip I want to give you
about Russia is since Russia annexed Crimea that can cause some problems if
you go there and afterwards you wanna enter Ukraine. Technically Ukraine views
it as de jure which means legally their territory and
that you would have illegally entered Crimea if you went from Russia, the rest
of Russia because Russia de facto controls Crimea at the moment and they
could say that you entered the country illegally and cause problems. I've never
heard of anyone actually having that problem but that could be
an issues so just be aware of it if you go to Crimea. First of all you need to
get a Russian visa because the Russians say that it's their territory legally.
That's a course in dispute it's actually I would say de jure Ukraine but that's
just kind of not worth getting into an argument about for the purpose of this
video and yeah so just be aware of that that I can cause, might cause problems with
Ukraine sometime in the future the fact that you went to Crimea via the
rest of Russia or via Russia and something that's up to you. I can't
really advise on it. I haven't had any personal experience. I haven't been back
to Crimea since it was annexed by Russia. So that's my overview of travelling
visa-free in this region. I'm here in Brest in Belarus so that's giving you an
overview if you have a North American or European passport and you want to
travel to say Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. There you go that's what you
need to know. Write me in the comments section below what you think if you've
actually travelled here we've had any additional problems. Maybe your passport
was better or less favorable in terms of these are three options to travel around
this region. Let me know about your experiences and yeah I will see you in
the next video, the next tip Thursday next week. I hope you found this video
very valuable. At least it's a good overview if you're coming here and
'до свидания!' from Brest, Belarus.
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How to travel visa free to Belarus, Ukraine, Russia and Moldova | Tip Thursday 09

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