Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has signed a decree accepting 311 for citizenship including Iranians and Syrians, the presidential press service reported on March 28.

The move which previously would have only accepted countries from the former Soviet Union now included giving passports to Iranians, Syrians, Lebanon and even Vietnamese nationals. It is not known if the Middle Easterners and Vietnamese were part of the growing number of economic migrants attempting to cross into Poland in recent years and had been ejected by police forces in the neighbouring country. Crossings along the EU's borders with Belarus and Russia surged by 192%, reaching 17,000 in 2024, according to data from EU border agency Frontex. Russia and Belarus have long used their borders as a nuisance factor for countries such as Estonia, Finland, Latvia and Poland, by allowing illegal migrants through.

Many Iraqi Kurds, owing to their ethnicity, claim they are Syrian upon entry to the EU as rates of acceptance for Syrian refugees before the collapse of the al-Assad regime were significantly higher than those from Iraq, as data previously showed.

The Lukashenko regime press release also noted “At the same time, the President made a decision to reject applications for citizenship from a number of individuals who had repeatedly violated the laws of Belarus,” it reported.

Other countries to be given Belarusian passports included Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

The citizenship offer comes as Iran is set to enter into a free trade zone union with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), announced on March 17.

The Iran-EEU agreement was signed on December 25, 2023, in St Petersburg after extensive negotiations and represents one of the most significant trade developments for Iran in recent years as it seeks to strengthen regional economic ties amid ongoing Western sanctions.