Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree on granting the right to obtain Russian citizenship in a simplified procedure for certain groups of Ukrainian citizens.
The decree was published on Wednesday on the official Internet legal information portal.
The document says that this simplified procedure of obtaining Russian citizenship applies to Ukrainian citizens, who have no citizenship of other states, who were born and reside permanently on the territories of the Crimean republic and the city of Sevastopol, those who had left the above mentioned territories before March 18, 2014 and also their children, including adopted children, husbands and wives and parents.
The right to get Russian citizenship in a simplified procedure has been also granted to individuals without citizenship, who were born and resided in Crimea, and who had left the peninsula before it rejoined Russia, as well as other persons who were subjected to illegal deportation from the territory of the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.
The process of granting Russian citizenship will be also eased for Ukrainians and persons without citizenship, who have permission for temporary residence in Russia, a residence permit, a refugee identity card, a document on temporary refuge or a document of a participant of a state program on providing assistance to relocating to Russia fellow countrymen living abroad, those who resided in certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine in April 2014 and also their children, husbands and wives and parents.
Besides, under the decree the right to obtain Russian citizenship in a simplified procedure will be given to the citizens of Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and Syria, who were born on the territory of the Russian Socialist Federative Socialist Republic and held the Soviet Union’s citizenship.
The applications on obtaining Russian citizenship filed by the above mentioned groups of citizens should be considered within three months.
On April 24, Putin signed a decree enabling people living in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics to receive Russian citizenship under a simplified procedure. According to the document, the decision has been made “in order to protect human rights and freedoms” based on universally accepted international laws.