Head of DPR Pushilin claims that 5,000 residents of Donbas received Russian passports
In an interview with the Parliamentary newspaper, the head of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), Denis Pushilin, stated that more than five thousand residents of the Donetsk region which is not controlled by Ukraine received Russian passports.
He claims that the "migration service" received about 80,000 applications. Among those are applications for Russian and DPR passports and applications for consultations.
According to him, 33 migration offices are accepting the documents.
On 24 April, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the decree “On the determination for humanitarian purposes the categories of persons who have the right to apply to obtain Russian citizenship through a simplified procedure”. The decree grants such a right to permanent residents of the territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions which are not under Ukraine’s control.
On 29 April, the Russian media reported that the first of these passport centers had been opened in Novoshakhtinsk and had already received 80 applications from residents of the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic.
Another center was opened in the village of Pokrovskoye on 30 April. Kirill Alzinov, a spokesperson for Russia’s migration authority, said that only residents of the Donetsk People’s Republic could obtain passports at this center. “For the time being, two such centers will operate in the region. Taking into account the fact that considering an application can take up to three months, we expect that the first passports will be issued ahead of the specified deadline,” he said.