Citizens of Ukraine living in the Russian-controlled Ukrainian territories had until September 10, 2025, to "regulate their legal status" by obtaining Russian citizenship or leaving the territory, the BBC reports, citing Russian and Ukrainian sources.
The measure stems from a 2023 decree by Russian President Vladimir Putin, by which residents of the occupied regions who refused to receive Russian passports were equated with foreigners. With a new decree, the Kremlin requires them to leave Russia and the occupied territories within two years if they do not accept Russian citizenship.
According to the Russian authorities, currently over 3.5 million residents of Donbas and the so-called "Novorossiya" have already received Russian passports. The data were announced by the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation Vladimir Kolokoltsev.
The Ukrainian authorities reject these data as unreliable and manipulative, defining them as an element of Russian propaganda.
"The Russian Federation is deliberately manipulating statistics, trying to create the illusion of people's voluntary desire to integrate into its legal field," commented from the office of the Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubynets.
According to Lubynets, the process is a classic example of coercion, which contradicts international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions.
"Every passport issued in the temporarily occupied territories is evidence of a violation of human rights, not of legitimate integration," the Ukrainian Ombudsman points out.
Passport in exchange for access to basic services
According to international observers and human rights organizations, including the UN and the "ZMINA" human rights center, residents of the occupied territories are under pressure to accept Russian citizenship in order to continue their normal lives.
Without a Russian passport, citizens cannot receive medical care, social benefits, work, or education. From 2022, a number of administrative and social services - including property registration, pension payments and access to bank accounts - will require Russian documents.
According to human rights activists, this constitutes a systematic restriction of basic human rights.
"Russia is gradually eliminating all spheres of life where one could exist without a Russian passport," said ZMINA's advocacy director Alyona Lunyova.
The UN has documented cases where citizens have been denied medical care due to lack of Russian documents, including patients with chronic diseases or people with disabilities. Separate reports also mention the coercion of civil servants and medical workers to accept Russian citizenship under threat of dismissal.
Pressure and threats
Reports from various areas of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions indicate that health, education and administrative employees have been forced to obtain passports in order to keep their jobs.
A report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights states that some civil servants have been threatened with reprisals or arrest if they refuse to receive Russian documents.
The Ukrainian authorities qualify such actions as a war crime, since "the imposition of citizenship by the occupier on the local population is prohibited by international law".
Kiev's position: Ukrainians remain citizens of Ukraine.
Kiev emphasizes that all Ukrainians who received Russian passports under pressure remain citizens of Ukraine.
"No act of the occupying power can deprive a person of his Ukrainian citizenship or change his legal relationship with the state," Ombudsman Lubynets said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine called on residents of the occupied territories to be guided by their own safety and not to be afraid to accept "temporary documents" if this is necessary for survival, since "these documents have no legal force for the Ukrainian state".
Independent experts see in the mass passportization an attempt by Russia to consolidate administrative and demographic control over the occupied territories before possible peace negotiations.
According to political scientist Pavel Lisyansky, director of the Ukrainian Institute for Strategic Studies and Security, this is part of a broader strategy to legitimize the annexation:
"First, Russia created conditions for voluntary receipt of passports, and after interest was weak, it began to act forcibly."
The process of "Russification" in the occupied regions of Ukraine continues to be a central tool in Moscow's policy.
While Russia presents the issuance of passports as a "humanitarian act and integration", for Ukraine and international observers it is a form of forced assimilation incompatible with international law.
The deadline — September 10, 2025 — has put hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians before a choice that is in practice not a choice - either accept Russian citizenship or be forced to leave their homes.