In this paper we define the fractional Cox–Ingersoll–Ross process as Xt:=Y2t1{t<inf{s>0:Ys=0}}, where the process Y={Yt,t≥0} satisfies the SDE of the form dYt=12(kYt−aYt)dt+σ2dBHt, {BHt,t≥0} is a fractional Brownian motion with an arbitrary Hurst parameter H∈(0,1). We prove that Xt satisfies the stochastic differential equation of the form dXt=(k−aXt)dt+σ√Xt∘dBHt, where the integral with respect to fractional Brownian motion is considered as the pathwise Stratonovich integral. We also show that for k>0, H>1/2 the process is strictly positive and never hits zero, so that actually Xt=Y2t. Finally, we prove that in the case of H<1/2 the probability of not hitting zero on any fixed finite interval by the fractional Cox–Ingersoll–Ross process tends to 1 as k→∞.