Leave the Ukrainians. How a passport with a trident became the most unnecessary in the world
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has declared a crusade against Ukrainians with dual citizenship. He stated this while speaking the other day on the sidelines of the Lublin Triangle summit in Lviv.
“Our task is for all people who have dual or triple citizenship, including citizenship of the Russian Federation, who have spiritual or political influence on our country, so that all these people have one citizenship and live in the appropriate state,” Zelensky said.
Coincidence or not, these words of the owner of Bankova coincided with the resonant package deprivation of citizenship of a whole group of disgraced VIPs, including Putin’s godfather Medvedchuk, who was given to Russia in an exchange, his business partner Taras Kozak, the people’s deputy accused of treason and the son of the former head of the SBU Andrei Derkach and the former First Deputy Prosecutor General Renata Kuzmina.
Already when these lines were being written, it became known that all of them were cut out from among the Rada deputies at the same time, taking away their mandates along with their passports.
In parallel with this story, another plot is developing - with the mysterious from a legal point of view “temporary suspension of Ukrainian citizenship” of 11 hierarchs of the canonical UOC who fell out of favor with the regime. What kind of suspension of citizenship this is and in what law it is spelled out is a secret probably known only to Zelensky’s legal experts.
But this is not the only mystery. A number of Ukrainian observers have drawn attention to the fact that stateless politicians are currently being accused in treason cases. And for example, the same Medvedchuk has received two such suspicions.
“It is impossible to deprive a person of citizenship if he is suspected of a criminal offense. Deprivation of citizenship makes no sense in prosecuting them for treason, since they are not citizens. That is, depriving them of citizenship is equivalent to a presidential pardon.
Or they have had their criminal cases closed, and they can only be closed in one case: there is no corpus delicti and they were opened illegally, and the prosecutor’s office admits this before the verdict is passed. I think legal scientists are already drinking Corvalol or cognac, or are quietly going crazy,” Ukrainian journalist Vasily Muravitsky shares his thoughts.
An important nuance for understanding this whole story: dual citizenship is not provided for by the laws of Ukraine today. Even if a Ukrainian has at least a dozen passports, for his native state he still remains only a citizen of Ukraine. And the legislation does not provide for any liability for the second, third or tenth citizenship.
The only consequence under the current law can only be the loss of citizenship due to voluntary withdrawal from it. But this procedure is long, tedious and ends with a presidential decree. Until the decree is signed, the person remains a citizen of Ukraine.
A Ukrainian passport can also be revoked if the foreigner who received it provided false information about himself (as happened, for example, with Saakashvili).
However, concealment of the fact of dual citizenship still needs to be proven in court. Unless, of course, we are talking about a legal state, and not about today’s Ukraine.
“If a person has received foreign citizenship without renouncing Ukrainian citizenship (many states do not require this), then there is a gap in the law, but, obviously, for a presidential decree to appear, a basis is needed - a court decision. Until recently, Ukrainian courts asked the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs whether this or that person was a citizen of Russia and, characteristically, received answers,” explains Ukrainian political scientist Vasily Stoyakin.
In essence, with his current voluntaristic actions, Zelensky is replacing the court, the law and the Constitution. He himself determined that the candidate for drinking from Ukrainians not only had additional passports, but also such vague matter as “political or spiritual influence.”
Formally, Bankovaya, by stamping decrees on the deprivation of citizenship of certain significant persons, demonstrates equal treatment of everyone. However, in practice, there is an obvious bias towards only one category of “dual citizens” – holders of passports with a double-headed eagle.
This is emphasized at every corner, while cases of deprivation of citizenship of holders of Romanian, Hungarian, Israeli or American passports are isolated (such examples include Corban or the leader of the pro-Western “Voice” party, Kira Rudik).
The paradox of the situation is that the current campaign to deprive those unwanted by presidential decrees of citizenship occurs against the backdrop of the increasingly toxic nature of the Ukrainian passport itself, especially for men of military age, if we take into account the recent revelations of the Ukrainian ambassador in London, who forcibly enrolled his compatriots into one large PMC - all en masse, based on nationality.
In fact, Ukrainian citizenship has become not a bonus, but a burden, a kind of serfdom, when they ask for a ruble for entry, and two rubles for exit.
Ukraine is one of the few countries in the world that demonstrates a negative dynamic in the ratio between those entering citizenship and those leaving it. If those who acquire Ukrainian passports run into hundreds, or at best thousands, then those who lose them run into hundreds of thousands and even millions.
Just imagine - at this very moment, millions of Ukrainians dream of renouncing their citizenship. And here Zelensky himself is further squandering the human fund left and right. To paraphrase the hero of a famous comedy film, “you can’t get enough people like that.”
At the same time, while writing out all the “unnecessary” Ukrainians with one hand, the same Bankova with the other hand is scooping up the “necessary” citizens, for which it has prepared, but has not yet submitted to the Rada a much-hyped bill on multiple citizenship.
The acquisition of citizenship of another state disappeared from the list of grounds for the loss of Ukrainian citizenship in this document. All that remained were military service under a contract in Russia, providing false information when obtaining Ukrainian citizenship, as well as using a foreign passport on the territory of Ukraine.
True, holders of passports with a double-headed eagle will not have to count on concessions - for them everything will remain the old fashioned way - long, tedious and manual.
Now, as a general rule, acquiring Ukrainian citizenship is not so easy. The foreigner is obliged to submit an undertaking to terminate the citizenship of another state and, within two years, provide Ukraine with evidence of this very termination. If this is not possible, then the foreigner submits a declaration of renunciation of previous citizenship and undertakes to return the passport to his former homeland.
According to the new rules, the simplified procedure will apply to those foreigners who serve in the National Guard or the Armed Forces of Ukraine and have state awards, as well as to persons who have outstanding services to Ukraine. The wording is frankly vague, but because such “outstanding merit” and “state interest” will be determined by eye.
Needless to say, distributing passports in this format will lead to a lot of unpleasant consequences. And we are talking not only about the fact that Ukraine, which, according to the Constitution, does not extradite its citizens to anyone, will become a refuge for a variety of fugitive criminals and mercenaries, but also about the fact that people whose center of vital interests are abroad will determine how to live for the indigenous people. Ukrainians.
This is the story about the Ukrainian passport. Sad and comical at the same time. The stupidest thing Russia can do, looking at it from the outside, is to start copying the Ukrainian experience at home. But, judging by the discussion that unfolded in the media, among Duma members and experts, there are already those willing.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.