Kyiv: Russian passports will be issued primarily to ‘power structures’ of LPR and DPR militants
Russian passports in LPR and DPR will be issued primarily to representatives of the "power structures" of militants, said the Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine for European Integration Anatolii Petrenko.
"We have reasons to believe that first of all passports will be issued to the so-called "power structures" of the occupation administrations. Therefore, both de facto and de jure, the use of weapons in the illegally occupied territories will be carried out by citizens of the Russian Federation, who will now have Russian passports," reads Petrenko’s statement published on the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s website.
According to him, it was a major concern during the meeting of the UN Security Council. The result was a condemnation of such illegal actions and an appeal to the Russian Federation to resolve all issues in line with international law.
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.