Russia: visa and entry rules

Crossing into Russia: where a foreigner can actually enter

Being on the checkpoint list does not mean the crossing works. Russia designates a separate list of points where the unified e-visa is accepted, and several of them sit on borders that are shut. Check the current list on the foreign ministry's e-visa portal against the operating status of the crossing itself before you commit to a route.

From Belarus you cannot enter by land at all. There are no international checkpoints on the Russia-Belarus border: it is open to citizens of the two countries and legally uncrossable for everyone else. A third-country national arriving by car, bus or train receives no entry stamp and no migration card, and the crossing is treated as unlawful. The only lawful route between the two countries is a direct flight.

With Georgia it is Verkhny Lars, the single working crossing and the main southern gateway. It accepts the e-visa. Since 1 October 2025 an electronic queue has applied to freight; lorries wait three to four days on average, cars queue separately and move faster. Queues stretch out over public holidays.

With Kazakhstan dozens of crossings work: Petukhovo and Mamlyutka towards Tyumen, Troitsk and Kayrak towards Chelyabinsk, Veseloyarsk and Auyl in the Altai, Mashtakovo and Syrym towards Orenburg. A foreign national needs a passport and a visa or e-visa here; the rule about an internal passport being enough applies only to citizens of the two countries.

The Finnish border is closed. The road crossings do not work, and from 1 July 2026 rail traffic has been suspended as well — Vyborg, Svetogorsk, Vyartsilya, Lyuttya and Saint Petersburg Finlyandsky.

With Norway it is Borisoglebsk, or Storskog — the only crossing, and it operates. The restriction here is on the Norwegian side, which since May 2024 has not been letting Russian tourists through.

With Estonia it is Narva-Ivangorod, pedestrian only since the reconstruction began in February 2024, open from 7:00 to 19:00. The road crossings Koidula and Luhamaa are further south-east; the Pechory-Pskovskiye rail crossing has been closed since 1 July 2026.

With Latvia it is Terekhovo and Grebnevo, with the Pytalovo rail crossing closed since 1 July 2026. With Lithuania — Chernyshevskoye and Sovetsk towards Kaliningrad. With Poland — Mamonovo-2 and Bagrationovsk from Kaliningrad region; Gronowo and Goldap have been suspended by the Polish side.

Crossing with Ukraine is closed. The border with Azerbaijan has been closed since March 2020, declared shut for the pandemic and extended ever since — the only closed stretch in the Caucasus.

With Mongolia — Kyakhta, open year-round and the main one; Tashanta in the Altai, seasonal and closed in winter depending on the weather; Solovyovsk in Zabaykalsky Krai. With China — Zabaykalsk, Blagoveshchensk with its bridge over the Amur, Pogranichny and Kraskino in Primorye. With North Korea — Khasan, the rail bridge over the Tumen.

Bringing your own car into Russia

The car is declared at the border as a temporary import. You fill in a passenger customs declaration with the plate, make, model, chassis and engine numbers, colour and declared value, plus the entry point and the planned exit. The customs code of the Eurasian Economic Union allows up to a year, but in practice the term is cut to the length of your permitted stay: a 30-day e-visa gives the car 30 days.

A European Green Card no longer covers Russia. It stopped being valid here in June 2023, so third-party liability has to be Russian OSAGO, bought for the whole period the car will spend in the country. It is the first document asked for at the crossing, and there is no exemption for foreign plates.

The car has to leave with the driver who brought it in. Handing it to someone else or selling it inside the country requires a customs deposit, and failing to take it out on time turns the temporary import into a customs debt.

The workable directions are southern and eastern: Georgia via Verkhny Lars, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia via Kyakhta or Tashanta. From the European Union the road route is effectively closed — those crossings are either shut or restricted on the far side.

Tashanta does not work all year. The high pass closes in winter and the Chuysky Highway into Mongolia becomes impassable.

Verkhny Lars queues as a matter of course, and over public holidays the wait grows. The electronic queue has so far been introduced for lorries only.

Bringing a pet into Russia

An ISO microchip is required, and it has to be implanted before the rabies vaccination. A chip fitted afterwards does not link the animal to its vaccination record, and the vaccination then does not count.

The rabies vaccination must be valid on the day of travel. Russia treats the vaccine as valid for one year even when the manufacturer states three, so a shot given two years ago will not be accepted, and the veterinary certificate cannot be issued earlier than 20 days after vaccination.

Russia does not require a rabies antibody test. This is the point where the procedure is markedly simpler than entering the European Union: no titre test, no three-month wait, and the requirements are the same regardless of which country the animal comes from.

The veterinary certificate is issued within five days before departure by the state veterinary authority of the country you are leaving, and it has to name the microchip number, the vaccination date and its validity.

Dogs are additionally expected to be vaccinated against distemper, hepatitis, parvovirus, adenovirus and leptospirosis; cats against panleukopenia. These are recommendations rather than grounds for refusal, but a certificate without them draws questions.

No quarantine is imposed when the paperwork is in order. Up to five animals may be brought in by one owner as a personal import; six or more is treated as a commercial consignment with an entirely different procedure.

The airline is a separate hurdle. Carriers set their own rules on weight, breeds and the number of animals in the cabin, and they can refuse even when the documents are complete. Brachycephalic breeds — pugs, bulldogs, Persian cats — are often not carried at all because of the risk of breathing problems in flight. A place for the animal is booked together with the ticket.

Migration registration and what an overstay costs

A migration card is filled in on entry and kept until you leave. It records the date and the declared purpose of the visit, and it is asked for together with the passport at registration, at hotel check-in and on departure. Losing it turns leaving the country into a separate errand, so it travels inside the passport.

Registration at the place of stay is due within seven working days. The count starts the day after arrival and skips weekends and Russian public holidays. A hotel, hostel or guesthouse files it for you within one working day of check-in: you hand over the passport and the migration card and get a detachable slip back. Staying in a private flat shifts the duty to the host, who has to file it in person or by post — this is the part that goes wrong most often, because a host renting out informally has no interest in registering anyone.

Registration and visa are two different things and both are checked. The visa says how long you may stay in the country, the registration says where you are staying. Moving to another city for more than seven working days means registering again at the new address.

An overstay is an administrative offence, and the penalty scales with its length. A fine comes first, then removal from the country, then a ban on returning that is counted in years rather than months. The amounts and the ban lengths are set by federal law and change; before relying on any figure, check it against the migration service of the interior ministry rather than a travel site.

A short excess is not treated as a rounding error. Departure is where the record surfaces, the officer at passport control has no discretion, and an entry ban issued at that moment cannot be appealed on the spot.

Devices may be inspected at the border. Border guards are entitled to look through the contents of a phone or laptop, and on some routes this is done systematically — in particular at Verkhny Lars.