Passportization

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This article describes modern efforts by one country, generally Russia, to induce residents of another, voluntarily or involuntarily, to take up its .

Passportization is defined as the mass conferral of

Russian Citizenship Act, amended in 2002, which allows naturalization in a simplified procedure.[5]
In particular, the requirement of five years' residence on Russian territory is suspended for former citizens of the Soviet Union, Art. 14 para. 4 Russian Citizenship Act. As the number of Russian passport holders in regions of adjoining nations grows, Russia then invokes its national interest in defending its citizens by promoting the independence or annexation of these regions.[6] This process has been most common in Georgia and Ukraine.

Georgia

In Georgia this occurred in South Ossetia and Abkhazia,

Sukhum.[8] The Georgian Foreign Ministry denounced the passport allocation as an “unprecedented illegal campaign”. On February 1, 2011, Soviet passports were no longer considered valid for crossing the Russian-Abkhaz border.[10]

In April 2009, the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities stated there was "pressure being exercised on the Georgian population in the Gali District through the limitation of their education rights, compulsory "passportization", forced conscription into the Abkhaz military forces and restrictions on their freedom of movement."[11] An effort to force ethnic Georgians in Abkhazia to take on Abkhaz citizenship was rebuffed in 2009.[12]

Russia's extraterritorial naturalisation practice in South Ossetia and Abkhazia since 2002 constitutes an intervention contrary to international law and violates Georgia's territorial sovereignty.[13]

Ukraine

Russia has been naturalising people in the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk on a large scale since 2019.[14] This became possible after Art. 29 para. 1.1 Russian Citizenship Act was inserted by law of 27 December 2018. This provision empowers the Russian President to establish categories of foreign citizens and stateless persons eligible to apply for Russian citizenship under the simplified procedure. By Decree No. 183 of 24 April 2019, residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions became eligible accordingly.

During the

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, forced passportization has also been done against Ukrainians in the occupied parts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.[15]

References