Iryna Vereshchuk, Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories, believes that obtaining a passport of a Russian citizen by a Ukrainian should be considered a crime. She wrote about this in Telegram, Ukrainian News Agency reports.
"Any receipt by a Ukrainian citizen (regardless of the motives) of the passport of the aggressor state should be considered a crime. We must convey this to the citizens who are currently under temporary occupation. I understand that this is harsh, but it is about the existence of the Ukrainian state," she wrote.
Vereshchuk notes that Russia is in a hurry to issue its passports and prepare for its "referendums" in the temporarily occupied territories. She emphasizes that passports and "referendums" are Russian weapons, more dangerous than missiles.
The Vice Prime Minister believes that in order to effectively oppose the occupation, Ukraine should take a clearer and tougher position regarding obtaining passports of the occupiers and voting in their "referendums" and clearly state that this is a crime against the state.
She notes that lawyers now say that there may be small exceptions to obtaining passports, for example, obtaining a passport in order to move to the territory controlled by Ukraine.
As Ukrainian News Agency reported, earlier the representative of the President of Ukraine in the Constitutional Court, Fedir Venislavskyi, said that there will be no negative consequences for Ukrainians who were forced to accept Russian citizenship under the threat of life, freedom, and normal existence in the temporarily occupied territories, if they declare that they were forced to change citizenship.
Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the simplified procedure for acquiring Russian citizenship for Ukrainians.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine stated that illegal passportization in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as in Crimea and in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, is a gross violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, norms and principles of international humanitarian law.
Matti Maasikas, Head of the Delegation of the European Union to Ukraine, said that no one in the EU would ever recognize passports issued by Russia in the occupied territories.
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