What are the grounds for a temporary residence permit in Ukraine?

What a ground is and why everything depends on it

A ground is the lawful reason a foreigner lives in Ukraine for longer than a visa or a visa-free stay allows. The Law of Ukraine on the Legal Status of Foreigners and Stateless Persons gives an exhaustive list of grounds in Article 4. You cannot invent one of your own, and the ДМС (State Migration Service, DMS) will not issue a посвідка (temporary residence permit, TRP) on a "combination of circumstances".

Your ground decides the document package, how long the card is valid, whether you need a type D visa and even what happens to you when your circumstances change. As a general rule under paragraph 4 of Procedure No. 322, the permit is issued for no more than one year, while founders, participants and beneficial owners of companies receive it for two years. We cover the general procedure in our guide to the TRP. This article focuses on choosing the ground, because that is the stage where you decide how calm your next year will be.

Which grounds are the most common

Most of our clients get their permit on one of three grounds, namely employment, marriage or volunteering. The others come up less often, but they work too.

Work. The employer obtains a дозвіл на застосування праці (work permit), and that permit becomes the basis of the TRP. The DMS package then includes the permit itself and the employer's undertaking to notify the DMS if the employment contract ends early. This route is described in detail in our article on the TRP based on a work permit.

Marriage to a Ukrainian citizen. This ground is proved by the marriage certificate and the passport of the Ukrainian spouse, who files it in person. The specifics are covered separately in the article on a TRP through marriage.

Study. The higher education institution issues an enrolment order and takes on the duty to inform the DMS if the student is expelled. How this looks in practice is explained in the piece on the TRP for students.

Volunteering. The organisation that engages volunteers must be published on the website of the National Social Service of Ukraine, and it files a submission about the foreigner with the DMS.

Full list of grounds and their documents

The table below pairs the grounds in Article 4 of Law No. 3773-VI with the documents that paragraph 33 of Procedure No. 322 requires on top of the base package.

Who controls your ground

Grounds differ in more than paperwork. What matters more is who decides whether the ground continues to exist. A work-based TRP rests on the employer, who can dismiss the employee or close the business. A marriage-based permit rests on the family. A student permit depends on the institution and on whether the person actually studies. A volunteer permit is tied directly to the organisation and its status with the National Social Service.

Before you choose, it helps to answer a few questions honestly:

These answers decide which ground to pick more often than the formal simplicity of the package does.

• who files the documents as the host party, and are they prepared to do it every year;
• which event would automatically destroy the ground, and how likely it is within the coming year;
• whether you have a fallback ground you could switch to without leaving Ukraine;
• whether your particular nationality needs a type D visa for this ground.

When you need a type D visa and when you do not

Under Article 5-2 of the law, a foreigner must obtain a long-stay type D visa before applying for a TRP. This leads to a common mistake. People enter Ukraine visa-free under the 90/180 rule and assume they can file for a residence permit once they are in the country. For most nationalities that does not work, because visa-free entry and visa-free access to a TRP are two different things.

Exceptions are set by laws and international treaties. Those who do not need a type D visa file their documents without leaving Ukraine, except citizens of the aggressor state. They must do so no later than 15 working days before their permitted stay ends. A separate exception linked to martial law covers volunteers and staff of humanitarian missions, other than Russian citizens, and applies for the period of martial law and one year after it ends.

How to keep your permit when the ground changes

Your permit stands on its ground. Dismissal, divorce, expulsion from university or the closure of an organisation all give the DMS a reason to revoke the card. Procedure No. 322 expressly names among the grounds for revocation the end of the grounds for stay and a reasoned request from the host party.

That is why changes are better planned ahead. If only the employer changes, there is a procedure for moving to a new employer without losing the permit. If the ground itself changes, for example marriage takes the place of work, prepare the documents for the new ground before the old one falls away.

Lawyer's experience

In our cases the most time goes not on the filing itself but on choosing the ground at the start. A client comes to us saying "I need a residence permit", and the first thing we establish is which ground they already have and which one could be created. Sometimes that is their own company and a work permit in it. Sometimes it is a volunteer organisation the person already works with.

My advice is to think a year ahead. A ground that rests on a single arrangement with a single employer is the most vulnerable. A ground the foreigner controls personally is more stable, although it takes more paperwork. Before any filing we also check the person in the Unified Register of Debtors, because an unenforced decision on a fine or debt is a separate ground for refusal, however strong the residence ground itself may be.

If you are not sure which ground suits you, we go through the options at a consultation and explain what you would need to collect for each one. We handle the residence permit process from choosing the ground to collecting the card.

Frequently asked questions