Photo: information and analytical portal of the Union State
Russian conscripts for whom military commissariats have imposed a travel ban will not be able to leave Belarus and travel abroad. This was confirmed to a Belsat journalist by the country’s State Border Committee.
Have Russians who received draft notices already stopped being allowed to leave Belarus? Recently, human rights advocates from the Movement of Conscientious Objectors reported that a Russian man who had received a notice to appear at a military commissariat was not allowed to cross from Russia into Belarus via the land border. He was able to reach Minsk by train, where there were no checks.
When the man arrived in Minsk, he was twice denied boarding a plane: first for a flight to Tbilisi, then to Yerevan. In all episodes, airport staff did not provide any written documents and limited themselves to oral explanations.
What lawyers say. The Movement of Conscientious Objectors suggested that Belarusian and Russian border guards may have begun exchanging information from the electronic military registration registry and the draft notice registry. At the same time, Get Lost noted that this case so far remains isolated and that some Russians with draft notices still manage to leave Belarus.
At the Conscript School, they indicated that what happened more likely points to attempts by Russia and Belarus to synchronize their border databases, rather than to Russia transferring military commissariat data and military registration registries to Belarus.
What the Belarusian authorities say. Belarus’s State Border Committee told a Belsat journalist that Minsk and Moscow do indeed have some kind of database of people “restricted from leaving.” If a person is entered into this database, they will not be allowed to leave Belarus. The agency did not disclose additional details.
How electronic draft notices work. In 2023, amendments were adopted that fully transferred military registration to an electronic format. The draft notice registry became fully operational in August 2025.
An electronic draft notice is considered served seven days after the date it is posted in the draft notice registry. After that, a ban on leaving the country takes effect for the conscript. If within 20 days from the moment the notice is served he does not appear at the military commissariat, other restrictions are also applied to him: on driving, registering as an individual entrepreneur, obtaining loans, and carrying out real estate transactions.
Did the restrictions work earlier? In December of last year, Important Stories found out that military commissariats and the FSB had still not established data exchange on electronic draft notices. Therefore, conscripts continued to leave Russia without restrictions. At the same time, human rights advocates noted isolated cases in which conscripts entered into the electronic draft notice registry were not allowed to leave the country.
Thus, human rights advocates from Get Lost began collecting appeals from conscripts on October 14, 2025, who were trying to leave Russia while having draft notices and restrictions. Since then, 15 appeals have come through their assistance line: in 13 cases departure was successful, and only in two cases was exit denied at the border.
In addition, in March the Movement of Conscientious Objectors learned that a package of restrictions had been applied to a Russian conscript for the first time because of his failure to appear at a military commissariat. Later, human rights advocates reported that Russians were managing to appeal the introduction of such restrictive measures.