Russia has issued millions of passports to Ukrainians living in illegally Russian-occupied territory, leaving them at risk of conscription into its army, the UK Ministry of Defence has said.
Around 3.5 million Russian passports have been issued to Ukrainians, Moscow’s interior minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev said. This means around 700,000 have been issued since March 2024, when 2.8 million had been handed out.
Holding a Russian passport in the occupied territories has been made necessary for Ukrainians who want to access healthcare, retirement income, social services, or prove property ownership. A Russian law stipulated that anyone in the occupied territories who did not have a Russian passport by 1 July 2024 was subject to imprisonment as a “foreign citizen”.
The eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are all partially under Russian control, with Putin’s forces having controlled much of south and east Ukraine since its invasion in February 2022. Millions of Ukrainians live under Russian control.
Incentives are also offered as part of the passport, including a stipend to leave the occupied territory and move to Russia, pensions for retirees, humanitarian aid, and money for new parents who have children with Russian birth certificates.
For each Russian passport and birth certificate issued, it becomes more difficult for Ukraine to reclaim its lost land and children – and it allows Russia to claim a right to defend its new citizens against a hostile neighbour.
“Russian efforts to enforce governance in illegally occupied territory, and to coerce and compel Ukrainians to accept Russian passports, demonstrate the Russian senior leadership’s continuing commitment to, and pursuit of, a Russification policy,” the UK Ministry of Defence said. “Possession of a Russian passport also constitutes eligibility for conscription into the Russian military. Ukrainians without a Russian passport also face the seizure of their property by authorities.”
Russia has a history of enforcing citizenship on Ukrainians, after adopting a similar approach after it annexed Crimea in 2014. Russian citizenship was automatically given to permanent residents of the peninsula and those who refused lost rights to jobs, healthcare and property.
In eastern Ukraine, Russia first passed laws to make it easier to obtain passports in May 2022, before introducing punishments for those who did not accept citizenship in April 2023. Russians could be considered stateless and required to register with Moscow’s internal affairs ministry.
Hundreds of properties deemed “abandoned” were seized by the Russian government after officials said a Russian passport was needed to prove property ownership.
“If someone got their passport in August 2022 or earlier, they are most certainly pro-Russian, Oleksandr Rozum, a lawyer who left the occupied city of Berdyansk and now assists Ukrainians under occupation, said in 2024. “If a passport was issued after that time – it was most certainly forced,” he added.
Latest Defence Intelligence update on the situation in Ukraine - 07 March 2025.
— Ministry of Defence 🇬🇧 (@DefenceHQ) March 7, 2025
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The area controlled by Russia has grown in the past year, with Putin’s forces steadily edging forward in eastern areas, taking village by village as the Ukrainian military struggles with manpower issues.
But Russian forces have also faced difficulty in sustaining the vast numbers of troops needed to fight their war of attrition in Ukraine, and their enforcement of passports on Ukrainians may come as part of an effort to increase its pool of frontline manpower.
Moscow has made use of Russian prisoners to help compensate for the huge losses it suffers on the battlefield as a result of what has been described as a “meat grinder” strategy – in which thousands of troops are sent charging at Ukrainian defence lines in an attempt to overcome them through sheer manpower.
Thousands of North Korean troops sent by Pyongyang have also supplemented Russian forces on the ground.
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