Is a citizenship stamp on a child's birth certificate mandatory in 2025 to travel to Bulgaria?

Until 2024, a citizenship stamp on a Russian birth certificate was not mandatory, and it was sufficient that both parents had a note of Russian Federation citizenship on this certificate. Now the laws have changed. In 2023, Presidential Decree No. 889 of November 22, 2023, "Issues of Citizenship of the Russian Federation," was signed, according to which Russian citizens are now checked for the presence of Russian citizenship when leaving the country. And if citizenship confirmation is lacking, in 2025, they may not be allowed through the border. The Border Service of the FSB of Russia (not customs!!!), which processes citizens at the border, has issued clarifications: Now, to take a child under 14 abroad, you need to show at border control any of the following documents:

• A stamp on the birth certificate.
• A separate insert on citizenship assignment.
• A record of the child in the parents' passport with a stamp and signature of an FMS employee.
• The child's own passport or own passport after reaching 14 years of age.

We note that even one of the listed citizenship confirmations is sufficient, and this works in practice and complies with the law. In other words, it turns out that if the child has their own passport or internal Russian passport obtained upon reaching 14 years of age, or has a citizenship insert, or is inscribed in your (parents') passport with an FMS employee's signature and stamp, then it is not necessary to put a stamp on the birth certificate even "just in case." And all the stories in chats and forums from users about not being allowed out under any circumstances without a stamp on the birth certificate are inaccurate information as of 2025.

To summarize, we reiterate that the question can be definitively answered as follows:

• If you are traveling with a child abroad to one of the distant countries where entry is strictly by passport, and not by internal Russian passport or birth certificate, which is the vast majority of countries, then there is no need to worry about having a stamp at all; it is not required, as citizenship is confirmed by the passport.
• If you are traveling with a child abroad to one of the countries where Russian citizens can enter with an internal passport or birth certificate (currently Abkhazia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, South Ossetia) and the child does not have their own passport, Russian passport, insert, or is not inscribed in your passport with a signature and stamp, then the child must have a stamp on the birth certificate.

To put a stamp on the birth certificate, you will need to contact the FMS of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to have it affixed. Usually, this is done in one visit within just a few minutes, but sometimes it takes several days (depending on the workload of the FMS department). Also, stamps are placed in some MFC offices, but this takes much longer, and not all MFCs do this.

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