Belarus document photos online

In December 1991, in a hunting lodge deep inside Belarus's Belovezhskaya Pushcha, the leaders of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine signed a single document that declared the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The very forest where the world's largest superpower was quietly dissolved is also Europe's oldest, first recorded in 983 AD, and shelters the European bison, the continent's heaviest land animal. For Belarusians, the paperwork of identity carries this same weight of history: a young citizen receives their first passport at 14, and the modern Belarusian ruble has been reborn so many times that locals still call their money after the woodland animals once printed on it.

• Passport power The Belarusian passport ranked 66th on the 2025 Henley Passport Index, granting visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to around 80 destinations worldwide.
• First document Belarusian law expects every citizen to obtain their biometric passport at age 14, far earlier than the adult-only norm in many countries.
• Biometric ID Belarus issues a separate biometric ID card built to ICAO standards, encoding the holder's fingerprints, electronic signature and a 2D barcode on a driving-licence-sized card.
• Currency The national currency is the Belarusian ruble, divided into 100 kopecks, with the modern code BYN where the 'N' literally stands for 'new' after a 2016 reform.
• Money reset In 2016 Belarus knocked four zeros off its currency at a rate of 10,000 old rubles to one new ruble, and for the first time in its modern history issued circulating coins instead of only banknotes.
• Animal cash Belarus's first 1992 banknotes pictured a squirrel, hare, bison and other native animals, so many Belarusians still nickname their money 'zaychiki' (little hares) and 'belki' (squirrels).
• Statehood The 1588 Statute of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, one of Europe's most advanced legal codes, was written in Old Belarusian (Ruthenian), the chancery language of the era.
• First book In 1517 Francysk Skaryna printed the first book in the East Slavic world, beginning a Belarusian printing tradition decades before printing reached Moscow.
• Border quirk Belarus is the last country in Europe that still carries out the death penalty, a distinction that sets its legal and identity system apart from the entire EU.