EU won’t recognize passports that Russia plans to hand out to Ukrainians

The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, said on July 11 that the EU will not recognize passports that the Russian Federation hands out to Ukrainians.

He noted that the EU strongly condemns the decrees issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin of May 25 and May 30, which simplify the process of granting Russian citizenship and issuing Russian passports to citizens of Ukraine in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Regions.

“The new Russian legislation now simplifying the procedure for all Ukrainians to obtain Russian citizenship is yet another flagrant violation of UA sovereignty, linked to Russia’s illegal war. The EU will not recognise these passports and recalls its position”, Josep Borrell wrote on his Twitter page.

The EU also criticized attempts to introduce the Russian ruble as a parallel currency to the hryvnia, as well as attempts to impose Russian curricula on Ukrainian schoolchildren.

On July 11, Putin signed a decree granting Russian citizenship in a simplified manner to all residents of Ukraine. Earlier, at the end of May, Putin signed a decree on a simplified procedure for obtaining citizenship for residents of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Regions of Ukraine. Prior to that, such an order was introduced for residents of the so-called “DNR” and “LNR”.  In the key clauses of the new decree, the words “Zaporizhzhia Region of Ukraine or Kherson Region of Ukraine” have been replaced by the wording “or Ukraine”.

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The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry emphasized that such a decision is yet another example of encroachment on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, incompatible with the norms and principles of international law, and called on Ukraine’s international partners “to react harshly to Putin’s new passport fantasies.”