Russia’s domestic security service, the FSB, has proposed abolishing border zones in the Rostov and Voronezh regions, as well as eliminating the border zone between annexed Crimea and the Russian-occupied part of Ukraine’s Kherson Region. The proposals appear in draft agency orders spotted by the independent Russian publication Agentstvo. The FSB said the decision was linked to the completion of the apparent integration of the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics,” Russian-backed entities in eastern Ukraine, as well as the Russian-occupied Kherson Region.
Moscow claims to have annexed the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as Crimea, but the annexations are illegal and not internationally recognized. Notably, Russia has also not held any of the annexed regions — apart from Crimea — under full military control. In April, Russia's Ministry of Defense claimed, for the third time since the start of the full-scale invasion, to have fully occupied Ukraine's Luhansk Region.
According to the documents, the FSB plans to invalidate its own previous orders that had effectively made entry into and exit from the regions annexed in 2022 almost identical to crossing a state border. The drafts say the changes are needed because the illegally annexed Ukrainian regions were “admitted into the Russian Federation,” and their borders now form a “state border adjoining the territory of a foreign state.”
As a result, border zones will now be defined only for territories adjacent to the state border, rather than along the former administrative boundaries between Russian regions and annexed territories.
An exception was made for Crimea, where the border zone will remain, but only “within the Black Sea islands belonging to the Russian Federation.” The regional FSB branch will be responsible for setting specific places and hours for entering that zone and for installing warning signs.
