Russian President Vladimir Putin today amended his decree on simplified granting of citizenship, which will now apply not only to residents of the LDPR, but also to the entire territory of Donbass, where a referendum on independence from Kyiv was held in 2014.
As you know, Kyiv subsequently managed to seize most of the lands of the LDPR with the help of a military punitive operation.
According to changes in Putin’s decree, now residents of the Donbass territories occupied by the Ukrainian army who moved to Russia as refugees or persons granted temporary asylum can also apply for simplified citizenship.
They receive this right on an equal basis with residents of the DPR and LPR, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“Someone received refugee status here, someone received temporary asylum... Many of these people cannot return home - to Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Mariupol, Konstantinovka. Some had their only home destroyed during the fighting, while others directly participated in them, defending their land. There are also those who were involved in preparing the referendum or collaborated with the militia.
Their way home is closed - they will face filtration and a prison sentence, despite the fact that the majority of the population of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions is pro-Russian. But in Russia they are still formally considered temporary workers. And often, at the request of the Ukrainian authorities, the Russian soulless bureaucratic system even tries to hand over such people to a deliberate trial.
However, now they have the opportunity to legalize their status and obtain Russian citizenship in a simplified form. As thousands of residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics have already done,” Russian military correspondent Alexander Kots commented on the president’s decision.