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Get a Russian passport or leave your home.
That’s essentially the “choice” Russian occupiers are giving Ukrainian citizens in occupied areas of Ukraine.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a new decree requiring Ukrainian citizens living in certain Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine to “regulate their legal status.”
Ukrainian citizens in occupied areas of Zaporizka, Khersonska, Donetska, and Luhanska regions must obtain Russian passports by September 10. Otherwise, they will be classified as “foreigners,” subject to mandatory medical examinations, and a range of work restrictions, and only allowed to stay for a maximum of 90 days.
Stay. In their own country.
Let’s be clear: these areas are part of Ukraine. In any international conflict, like Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, occupying forces are not simply allowed to do whatever they want. There are rules. Such as not changing local laws or imposing their own – i.e., Russian – legislation.
What Russia is doing here is a violation of international law - that relating to occupation in particular. It adds to the long list of violations, including war crimes, already committed by Russian forces.
It’s worth recalling some of those other atrocities. Russian forces have indiscriminately bombed civilian homes. They’ve hit hospitals. They’ve targeted civilians trying to flee.
Russia has attacked energy infrastructure – terrorizing civilians, rather than securing military gain. In areas under occupation, Russian forces have also committed summary executions, enforced disappearances, and torture, which the UN has categorized as crimes against humanity. They’ve deported Ukrainian children en masse, another crime against humanity.
Russia has looted artwork from museums, robbing Ukraine of its cultural heritage. In occupied areas, they’ve forced the use of Russian language and the Russian state curriculum in schools, with brutal reprisals for teachers, parents, and even students.
The recent move to double down on forcing Ukrainian citizens to obtain Russian passports has echoes of these last crimes in particular. It’s part of Russia’s effort to erase the identity of a people and their culture.
It’s not exactly new, of course. Russian authorities have already forced millions of passports on residents of the occupied areas of eastern Ukraine and in occupied Crimea. For many Ukrainians in those areas, taking the unwanted document was simply a matter of survival.
What’s next could be darker still. Those Ukrainians who acquire a Russian passport might be forced to fight in Russian armed forces again their own kin. And Russia is clearly threatening to deport Ukrainian citizens who refuse the passport. Both are war crimes and the later could also constitute a crime against humanity.
All of this flies in the face of the strict legal obligations Russia has under international humanitarian law as an occupying power.
