Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians received Russian passports in 2020
In 2020, Russia issued 409,5 thousand of its passports to Ukrainian citizens. This is stated in the migration statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation for the past year, writes Air force.
The document does not specify which particular region of Ukraine received more Russian passports from.
But there is reason to believe that we are talking about residents of the uncontrolled areas of Donbass, where Russia has begun to issue its documents centrally since 2019.
Officially, 409,5 thousand is “the number of persons in respect of whom a decision was made to acquire Russian citizenship (acceptance, restoration, recognition).”
This is more than half (62%) of all passports that Russia issued to foreigners from all countries combined over the past year (656,3 thousand).
For example, Kazakhs received 2020 thousand Russian passports in 43, Belarusians - 10,3 thousand. Another 23 thousand Russian documents were issued to Uzbeks, 30,5 thousand to Armenians, 63,3 thousand to Tajiks.
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Russian passports in Donbass
Representatives of the “DPR” and “LPR” announced the issuance of Russian passports to the population of the “republics” in June 2019.
In July 2020, Deputy Prime Minister for the Temporarily Occupied Territories Aleksey Reznikov said that at that time 200 thousand Russian passports were issued in the Donbas.
“Most of the people who received these passports both in Crimea and Donbass are hostages,” he explained.
“This is their way of survival. The Ukrainian state has no claims against them, only against those who were collaborators, who served faithfully to the occupation regime, and who have blood on their hands, they will definitely bear responsibility,” the Deputy Prime Minister clarified.
In December 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin promised “more support” for the self-proclaimed “DPR” and “LPR”: “We will even increase support for Donbass. This applies to supporting production and solving social and infrastructural issues.”
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At the same time, the Kremlin continues to insist that there is a “civil war” in Ukraine and denies military support for “the army corps of the DPR and LPR,” despite evidence of the presence of Russian military equipment and military personnel published by Ukraine and the OSCE.
At the same time, Ukrainian negotiators periodically voice ideas about holding local elections in the occupied parts of Donbass. How the issue of voting for people with Russian passports will be resolved is still unknown.
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