Moving to Paraguay from Ukraine

Step 1

The documents a Ukrainian citizen assembles

Paraguay's Dirección Nacional de Migraciones (DNM) expects a specific, modest set of documents. As a Ukrainian citizen you gather these before you fly:

• Your international passport — the foreign-travel biometric passport (закордонний паспорт), not the internal ID card. Check the expiry date now, and read the wartime note in Step 2 if your passport is expiring while you are abroad.
• Your police clearance certificate — the довідка про несудимість, the certificate of no criminal record, issued by the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVS) of Ukraine. It can be requested through the Diia app or the MVS online service, but for use abroad you need the paper original, because an apostille is only placed on a paper extract. This is the police record Paraguay expects from Ukrainian citizens.
• Your birth certificate, and your marriage certificate if you are married and applying as a couple — issued by the civil registry (DRACS). Soviet-era certificates lack modern security features and usually must be re-issued in the current format before they can be apostilled.
• Every one of these documents must then be apostilled — see Step 2 — and later translated into Spanish by a sworn translator in Paraguay.

Step 2

Apostilles — and the wartime realities around them

Ukraine has been a party to the Hague Apostille Convention since 2003, so Paraguay accepts an apostille and you skip consular legalization. The catch: Ukraine has no single apostille office — three different ministries handle different document types — and the war complicates getting documents at all.

• The MVS police clearance certificate is apostilled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which since 2023 issues apostilles on its own documents directly, often together with the certificate.
• Birth and marriage certificates — civil-registry documents — are apostilled by the Ministry of Justice. Educational documents, if you ever need them, go to the Ministry of Education and Science instead.
• Honest context: since 2022, obtaining and apostilling documents is harder. If you are already abroad, consular access has been disrupted and the rules have shifted — services for men aged 18 to 60 were suspended in 2024 and largely restored in 2025, but procedures still change, so confirm what is available before you rely on it. A passport for an adult cannot be obtained by proxy, but a relative in Ukraine holding a power of attorney can often order and apostille civil documents on your behalf, and document-retrieval services do this routinely. Plan this early.
• Sworn translation into Spanish happens after apostille, by a translator matriculated with Paraguay's Supreme Court. It is done in Asunción, and getting it right the first time matters.

Be honest with yourself

Ukrainian tax does not simply switch off when you leave

This is the section most relocation marketing quietly skips. Ukraine taxes by residence, not citizenship — so the real task is ceasing to be a Ukrainian tax resident, not changing your passport. Residency is decided by a hierarchy of tests: a permanent home in Ukraine, then your centre of vital interests — family, business and social ties — then the 183-day count in a calendar year, and only as a last resort your nationality. Because the test starts with your home and your ties, simply spending time abroad does not automatically end Ukrainian residency; you may still be treated as a resident, and residents are taxed on worldwide income while non-residents are taxed only on Ukraine-source income. The war adds real uncertainty: many displaced Ukrainians have lived abroad for years, and how their home country and their host country each apply the 183-day rule and double-tax treaties to those years is not always settled. The honest summary: Paraguay can genuinely cut your cost of living and give you a stable second residency, but your Ukrainian tax status depends on facts that take deliberate steps to change, and it is not automatic. Speak to a cross-border accountant familiar with Ukrainian residency rules before any tax-driven decision.

Getting there

Flights, timeline, and your first weeks

A realistic picture of the move itself:

• Ukrainian airspace has been closed to civilian flights since February 2022, so there are no departures from Kyiv, Lviv or any Ukrainian airport. In practice you travel overland — by train, bus or car — to an airport in a neighbouring country, most commonly in Poland (Warsaw, Kraków, Rzeszów), Moldova (Chișinău), Romania, Slovakia or Hungary.
• From that airport there are still no direct flights to Asunción. The realistic routing connects through a European or Middle Eastern hub, then onward to São Paulo or Buenos Aires, and a short final leg into Asunción. Budget two long travel days including the overland segment.
• Document preparation is the long pole — ordering records, apostilles at two or three different Ukrainian ministries, and proxy or courier time under wartime conditions. Budget generously, often two to four months, and start before you book anything.
• You do not need a visa to enter Paraguay as a Ukrainian tourist — entry has been visa-free since 2009, with a permitted stay of up to 90 days. You begin the residency process in person, after you arrive, at the DNM.

FAQ

Moving to Paraguay from Ukraine — FAQ