"As I loved Ukraine before, I will continue to love it, I took a Russian passport to live." How forced passportization works in the occupation

The BBC tells how the forced passportization of Ukrainians in the occupation works.

All the names of the heroes of the material are known to the editorial office, but are not disclosed for security reasons.

In the summer of 2023, the ex-husband of Ukrainian Maria said that he was taking their daughter bowling, but instead took the child to the "LNR".

It all started with the fact that with the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Maria decided to flee the war to Europe. Her daughter was in a village in the occupied territory of Ukraine with her grandparents when the invasion began, so Maria went there. The only way out of the occupation was through Russian territory. The child's father lived there, and on the way to Europe, Maria and the child stopped by the father's house to see him. After that, she never saw her daughter again.

"He took the child and didn't return it. Then he calls and says: 'Ha-ha-ha, let's go to LNR,'" says Marija.

Now the girl lives with her father in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine. Her ex-husband blocked Maria on all networks. Communication with her daughter is possible only when she reports herself on social networks.

The only way for him to be with his daughter again is to go to court. But Maria cannot do this: in order to do so, she must obtain Russian citizenship from the Russian occupation authorities.

"He's taking advantage of the fact that I can't sue him. This is actually a kidnapping. He kidnapped the child, I don't see her," explains the woman.

This is just one of the many consequences of the forced issuance of Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories.

Putin's 2023 decree equated residents of occupied Ukrainian territories who had not been granted Russian citizenship with foreigners.

Putin later ordered Ukrainian citizens who had "stayed in Russia without legal grounds" to either leave the country or "regulate their legal status" by September 10, 2025.

Pavlo Lisyansky, director of the Ukrainian Institute for Strategic Studies and Security, explained to the BBC that the decree was aimed at Ukrainian citizens who had not yet obtained a Russian passport.

"Initially, Russia created conditions for simplified obtaining of a Russian passport for residents of certain regions. But, since there were no queues for obtaining Russian passports, they began to do it by force. The Russians gradually began to limit the areas of life in the occupied territories where it was possible to do without a Russian passport," Alena Lunyova, director of advocacy at the ZMINA Human Rights Center, told the BBC.

According to Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, this is about 3.5 million residents of Donbas and the so-called "Novorossiya" (as Russia calls the occupied Ukrainian territories).

Ukrainian authorities call the figures published by Russia an "element of propaganda" and do not consider them reliable.

 

"The Russian Federation is deliberately manipulating statistics, trying to create the impression of the alleged "voluntary" desire of people to integrate into its legal system," the office of the Ukrainian Ombudsman, Dmytro Lubynets, commented on the situation with passports for the BBC.

 

Many people who left the occupied territories and were interviewed by UN representatives pointed out that they took Russian citizenship out of desperation.

 

 

To get to a gynecologist in Melitopol in 2023, Olga had to seek connections through acquaintances and take roundabout routes. The woman did not have a Russian passport, and without one it was impossible to visit a doctor in a Ukrainian city occupied by the Russians. Olga did not want to have a Russian passport.

“The doctor took me to the basement, because when I first came to the registry office, they told me that [Russian] documents were needed,” Olga, who later left Melitopol for Europe, told the BBC. “But there are very pro-Ukrainian doctors who have trusted nurses, you can ask, and the medical record is kept outside the hospital, the doctor keeps it somewhere, takes the risk. If there are no such acquaintances, it is very difficult.”

“A significant part of Ukrainians in the occupied territories were forced to surrender their passports not because of support for the occupation authorities, but because of life circumstances,” the Ukrainian ombudsman’s office says.

They understand that people under occupation often have no choice.

Without a Russian passport, people are effectively deprived of basic opportunities: they cannot receive medical care, apply for social assistance, get a job in public institutions, or even enroll a child in school.

“In July and August 2022, the ‘liberators’ simply provided humanitarian aid. And since September, they announced that they would provide it only with Russian passports. Ukrainian ATMs did not work. Ukraine could no longer pay pensions, and the question of direct survival arose. Older residents were forced to take Russian citizenship,” explains Victoria from Rubizhne in the Luhansk region.

“It is impossible to live in Mariupol without a Russian passport. Without it, you cannot connect a mobile phone or get a job. Well, maybe you can still work as a construction worker, but in a store or somewhere else - no. A bank account, a pension - only with a Russian document,” Mariupol resident Oleksiy told the BBC.

He himself received a passport back in 2022. The man says that he kept his Ukrainian passport: "As I loved Ukraine before, I will continue to love it, and I took my Russian passport with me to live," Oleksiy points out.

Tetjana, another BBC interviewee from the part of the Lugansk region that was occupied in 2022, was forced to take Russian citizenship when she was supposed to get custody of her granddaughter.  

 

“Otherwise, custody would be a nightmare,” she explains.

The woman even had to ask the passport office workers to make the document faster.

 

Maria was left with an apartment in the Luhansk region, which, according to her, could now be sold “at pre-war prices,” but she cannot even issue a power of attorney for her parents, because she does not have Russian citizenship.

“Almost everyone has Russian passports. There was no open violence to get married, but here now you can’t do anything with documents without such a passport,” another interlocutor from Donetsk tells the BBC.

In addition, the woman explains that if you leave the occupied territories and go to Russia or through Russia without a Russian passport, you will be subjected to the so-called “filtration” - interrogation by special services and a check on all grounds.

“This is a classic manifestation of coercion, which contradicts the norms of international law, and every passport issued in the temporarily occupied territories testifies not to support the occupation authorities, but to large-scale human rights violations,” Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinet told the BBC.

 

 

On February 14, 2023, the State Duma of the Russian Federation introduced mandatory Russian health insurance in the occupied territories. Such insurance requires a Russian passport, without which free emergency medical care is not available.

 

A report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights documented a case in which a woman in the Zaporizhia region was denied treatment because she did not have a Russian passport.

 

Another resident of the Zaporizhia region who eventually managed to leave the temporarily occupied territory said that his 75-year-old mother could not receive medical care because she did not have a Russian passport.

All residents of the occupied territories interviewed by the BBC confirm that it is impossible to get any kind of medical care without a Russian passport.

One of them, Ivan, a man with HIV positive status, said that due to the lack of life-saving therapy, which cannot be interrupted, he had to temporarily leave Mariupol and go to Russia after the invasion began.

There, activists illegally provided him with medication through a mutual aid system. Ivan then planned to move to Europe. But in 2023, he was forced to return due to his mother's serious illness.

"I can't watch all this, I can barely leave the house," the man emotionally describes life in the occupied city. "I took the documents, because there is no other way to get the pills".

He says he is still "hurt and ashamed" that he had to do it, even though he was forced to do it for health reasons. His mother has a different attitude - she voluntarily received a Russian passport and speaks positively about the new medicine, which is why they constantly quarrel. But Ivan does not dare to leave his mother, who needs constant help.

Alena Lunjova also tells about cases when people in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhya region were denied medical care because they did not have a Russian passport.

An insulin-dependent diabetic was not given insulin because he did not have a Russian passport. Human rights activists get this information from people who have left the occupied territories. The Ukrainian intelligence service also reported similar cases of refusal to dispense medication.

 

Tatyana, who has filed for guardianship of her granddaughter, says that she now urgently needs to re-pass the disability commission according to Russian standards, otherwise she will be deprived of social benefits - despite the fact that under Ukrainian law she was declared disabled for life.

Hundreds of people have found themselves in such a situation.

"There are not enough doctors, there is complete chaos, queues, you have to go at five in the morning, endure circles of hell," the woman complains.

 

 

"They told me: either I will get a Russian passport, or I will be sent back to where I was tortured... Now I have a Russian passport," the man recounts the words of an FSB officer after several days of torture in a detention center.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights' office cited the story in its report.

Civil servants in the occupied territories were told they had to have Russian passports to keep their jobs. Some of them were threatened by Russian soldiers, the UN report said.

In the Zaporizhia region, the head doctor of a medical facility warned an engineer that he could be fired if he did not have a Russian passport.

Later, the hospital administration told the engineer that since he did not have a passport, he could be "taken to the basement."

"If the boss got [a Russian passport - ed.], he forced the others who remained to work with him to do the same," Victoria tells the BBC from the Luhansk region.

One woman personally knew a man who had previously worked as a senior manager and became the head of an enterprise under the occupation authorities:

“He was the first to take passports and forced everyone else to take passports. He filed a request with the passport department for everyone and announced that anyone who wanted to continue working had to get passports. Or quit.”

In the Kherson region, a hospital director told a nurse that she would lose her job if she did not have a Russian passport. He said that the occupation authorities obliged him to report on the passport status of all employees every week.

In the Kherson region, those who died in the 2023 Kakhovka hydroelectric power plant disaster are in a particularly difficult situation. Most of the victims are residents of the occupied territories, and many residents of the town of Oleshki, which was almost completely flooded at the time, are still living in temporary housing facilities – and not always state-owned.

The priest, who at that time sheltered several elderly single women in his village community building, says: "Honestly, I would even be happy if they were given passports - they don't get any help."

Two of his wards went to Europe and the territory controlled by Ukraine with the help of volunteers - it was a long and difficult journey. Three more women continue to live in the community - the occupation authorities do not help them in any way, and the volunteers raise funds for private medical consultations.

The priest admits that he even turned to the administration with a request to send a passport officer to the village.

"They answered me literally: 'Nobody needs your old people,'" the priest says.

 

 

Ukraine considers Russian passports issued in the occupied territories to be invalid. This is stated by both the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and the Ukrainian Ombudsman's Office.

"Ukraine does not recognize any documents issued by the occupying authorities, except those related to civil status registration - birth, death or marriage. All other documents, especially passports, have no legal force in Ukraine," explains Dmytro Lubinets.

The very fact of obtaining a Russian passport is not a crime and does not entail criminal liability, says the Ukrainian Ombudsman.

According to him, it is important to note that persons who were forced to take this "document" by force or due to the lack of another way to solve their problem do not bear personal negative consequences. The authorities should recognize such cases as "forced circumstances that arose as a result of the occupation."

In addition, the Ombudsman's Office emphasizes that obtaining a passport of the Russian Federation in no way means the loss of Ukrainian citizenship.

“Every person, even if they were forced to take a Russian document, remains a citizen of Ukraine. No action of the occupying authorities can deprive a person of their true citizenship or change the legal connection with the Ukrainian state,” Lubinets said.

According to the BBC’s interlocutors who received Russian citizenship, their Ukrainian documents remained with them.

However, this could have depended on certain circumstances. According to Victoria from the Luhansk region, her acquaintance, who turned out to be a collaborator and took over the position of boss, personally “exemplarily” surrendered his Ukrainian passport and forced his employees to do the same, despite the fact that there were no such demands from the Russians.

“Local collaborators made strict demands,” she explains.

According to another Donetsk resident, in her region, some people are also being asked to undergo a certain procedure of pseudo-renunciation of Ukrainian citizenship.

"There is a requirement for civil servants to write a statement renouncing Ukrainian citizenship. It is just a written statement that has only a formal meaning - the person himself knows that he signed such a statement."

Generally, no one else is offered to do this. Those who have written such a statement have Ukrainian passports with them," she explains.

"Those who have the resources - money, strength and courage - to go and get a passport again in Ukraine are extending their Ukrainian passports. Because the journey is not easy, and there is no understanding of how they will be met at the Ukrainian border," adds the Donetsk resident.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry is urging Ukrainians in the occupied territories to first take care of their own safety.

"You need to take some papers - take them, for us this does not change your status. Please act based on your own safety. For the Ukrainian state, any papers that the occupiers give you are worthless and do not change the fact that we consider you citizens of Ukraine, who are Ukrainians at heart, according to the document," said the spokesman for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, Georgy Tykhy, in March 2025, immediately after the publication of Putin's decree.

 

At the same time, the Foreign Ministry advised Ukrainians to first leave the temporarily occupied territories.

"Obtaining a Russian passport under occupation conditions is not a violation of Ukrainian laws. On the contrary, forced passportization is a crime. When people are forced to take a Russian passport under occupation conditions, it is a war crime," says Alena Lunyova from the ZMINA Human Rights Center.

According to her, people who were forced to take Russian passports, on the contrary, can be considered victims.

At the same time, as Dmytro Lubinet notes, it is necessary to distinguish cases of forced obtaining a passport from situations when a person knowingly and voluntarily cooperates with the occupation authorities, takes up positions and participates in propaganda.

In such cases, Ukrainian law enforcement agencies do not assess the fact of possession of a Russian passport, but the specific actions of the person, which can be qualified as collaborationism or other crimes.

That is, a passport issued by the occupation authorities is not an automatic basis for accusation.

Olga, who left Melitopol in the summer of 2023, says that even after two and a half years she is tormented by nightmares:

"Constant fear of lack of documents. If I dream something, it's always nightmares that I came home and can't leave, then I don't have documents, then I don't have clothes, then they call me somewhere".