Minister for the Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories Oleksii Reznikov said in an interview with the TSN media agency that 2 million Ukrainians went through forced Russian passportization in the occupied Crimea, but no one has any right to condemn them for this.
“Today, in fact, all the citizens of Ukraine who are in the temporarily occupied territories are hostages of the occupation regime. About 300 thousand Ukrainians have gone through forced Russian passportization. I’m talking about the occupied Donetsk and Luhansk. In Crimea, the numbers reach 2 million”,- he noted.
Reznikov stressed that people are forced to take those passports because they are hostages, this is their way of surviving there. Therefore, no one has any right to condemn them for this. According to him, the state must find a mechanism how to deal with these consequences later.
In addition, when the de-occupation takes place, residents of the occupied Crimea will have the right to freely choose what to do with their passports.
“This will be their decision. Perhaps someone will decide for oneself that one wants to be a citizen of Russia – one has the right – this is one’s life, please. Then decide what you do with a Ukrainian passport. We know that today Ukrainian legislation does not give a legitimate reason to deprive citizenship in the presence of another one”,- the minister explained.