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Kharkiv: Russian President Vladimir Putin has expanded a fast-track procedure for granting Russian citizenship to all Ukrainians, not just those in Russian-occupied areas, in another effort to strengthen Moscow’s influence over the country, Ukraine says.
Until recently, only residents of the separatist eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, southern Zaporizhzhia and the Kherson regions, large parts of which are now under Russian control, were eligible to apply for Russian passports using the simplified procedure.
Rescue workers put out the fire of a destroyed car after a Russian attack in a residential area in Kharkiv.Credit:AP
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Klueba said Putin’s signing of the passport decree, which also applies to stateless residents in Ukraine, was an example of his “predatory appetites”.
“Russia is using the simplified procedure for issuing passports to tighten the noose around the necks of residents of the temporarily occupied territories of our state, forcing them to participate in the criminal activities of the occupying administrations and the Russian army of aggression,” Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry added in a statement.
Between 2019, when the procedure was introduced for the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk, and this year, more than 720,000 people living in the rebel-held areas in the two regions – about 18 per cent of the population – have received Russian passports.
In late May, three months after Russia invaded Ukraine, it offered to residents of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
The move appears to be part of Putin’s political influence strategy, which has also involved introduction of the Russian ruble in occupied territories, and could eventually result in the annexation of more of Ukraine into the Russian Federation. Russia already annexed its neighbour’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014.
Putin set the stage for such moves even before Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine, writing an essay last summer claiming that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, and attempting to diminish the legitimacy of Ukraine as an independent nation. Reports have surfaced of Russian authorities confiscating Ukrainian passports from some citizens.
The passport announcement came hours after Russian shelling of Ukraine’s second-largest city on Monday killed at least six people and injured 31, prosecutors and local officials said. Russian troops launched three missile strikes on Kharkiv, in an attack one official described as “absolute terrorism”.