Russia Forcibly Certified about 300,000 Ukrainians in Occupied Donbas

About 300,000 Ukrainian citizens were granted passports in the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The deputy prime minister, minister for Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of Ukraine Oleksiy Reznikov announced this.

“Today, all the Ukrainian citizens in the temporarily occupied territories are the hostages of the occupation regime. About 300,000 Ukrainians have gone through forced Russian certification. I am currently talking about the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions. As for Crimea, the number reaches 2 million people,” the official said.

He stressed that obtaining Russian citizenship is a forced step for people. “It is their way of survival there,” he said. That is why Ukraine is to find a mechanism to deal with these consequences later. Accordingly, the Ukrainian authorities want to solve this problem via a draft law on state policy in transition, which is currently under development.

The deputy prime minister added, that even after this law is adopted, no one will accuse the citizens who have received Russian passports. However, after the occupation, such people will have to decide if they want to remain citizens of Ukraine or the Russian Federation.

Bohdan Marusyak