No Russian Passport, No Pension, No Home: Citizenship Imposed in Occupied Territory

They told me to get a Russian passport, or else I’d be taken back to the place where I was tortured. Now I have a Russian passport.

Words of a man released after several days of detention and torture, quoted in a report from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), March 2024

Russia has, step by step since Crimea in 2014, extended a policy of making people living in occupied Ukrainian territory take Russian citizenship. In Ukraine this is called “passportization” (паспортизація). Drawing on the text of Russian presidential decrees and reports from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights (Ombudsman), this article looks at how the mechanism works and what happens to people who do not hold the passport. The content reflects the situation as of September 2026.

In Crimea, people were made citizens ‘automatically’

According to a report OHCHR published in February 2024 marking ten years of the occupation of Crimea, Russia stated that on March 21, 2014, it automatically granted Russian citizenship to Ukrainian citizens and stateless persons who were permanently resident in Crimea. The deadline to decline in writing was April 18, 2014, but the report also documents cases of people who went through the process to decline yet were still treated as Russian citizens.

Those who declined, or who were deemed not to meet ambiguous residency requirements, were classed as “foreigners,” lost the ability to remain permanently resident in Crimea, and were exposed to the risk of deportation. The report states that from 2017 to 2024, courts in Crimea ordered the deportation of at least 864 people, many of them Ukrainian citizens. A 2020 presidential decree restricted who could own land across large parts of Crimea to Russian citizens and Russian legal entities. As a result of these accumulating restrictions, the report states, by 2024 residents without Russian citizenship made up only about 0.5% of the official population.

2019 to 2022: the ‘simplified procedure’ was extended

A different method was used in the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts that Russia had controlled since 2014. Presidential Decree No. 183 of April 24, 2019 provided that people permanently resident in “certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts” could apply for Russian citizenship through a simplified procedure.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, the scope was widened. Presidential Decree No. 304 of May 25, 2022 added residents of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts, and Presidential Decree No. 440 of July 11, 2022 extended it to all Ukrainian citizens permanently resident in “Ukraine.” Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement that same day, saying “the passportization of Ukrainian citizens is legally void and has no legal effect for Ukraine.”

Without it, you become a ‘foreigner’ on your own land

On September 30, 2022, Russia unilaterally declared the “annexation” of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts. Presidential Decree No. 307 of April 27, 2023 provided (Clause 1) that, among Ukrainian citizens living in these four oblasts, those who indicated an intention to keep their Ukrainian citizenship, or who did not take an oath as Russian citizens, would be deemed, retroactively to September 30, 2022, “foreigners residing in Russia.” When these people apply for a Russian residence permit, they are required to be fingerprinted and photographed.

The version of the same decree current as of September 2026 (Clause 13) provides for decisions such as deportation against such people if they are deemed to threaten Russia’s national security, or if they have taken part in unauthorized assemblies, demonstrations, or pickets. OHCHR points out that because Russian law’s definition of “extremism” is broad, merely voicing support for Ukraine or criticizing Russia’s official account of the war can expose someone to the risk of deportation.

Presidential Decree No. 159 of March 20, 2025 required Ukrainian citizens in Russia without legal grounds to leave Russia or put their legal status in order by September 10, 2025. OHCHR reports that this imposed a deadline on all Ukrainian citizens in the occupied territories to “legalize” themselves by obtaining a basis to remain under Russian domestic law — a Russian passport, a residence permit, and so on — with the risk of deportation for those who did not comply. According to OHCHR, this procedure requires demonstrating knowledge of the Russian language and Russian history and law, and the same decree abolished a provision that had, in principle, entitled Ukrainian citizens to free medical care.

What is happening to people without the passport

OHCHR’s reports document, field by field, the disadvantages faced by people who do not hold a Russian passport.

• Employment: civil servants have been told by superiors that they must obtain a Russian passport to keep their jobs; Russian citizenship is required for civil-service posts in Russia. There is also a case of a hospital employee told they would be dismissed unless they obtained a passport (the March 2024 report)
• Pensions and social security: in the occupied territories, Ukrainian banks and postal services have stopped functioning, leaving pensions payable only through a Russian bank, and opening such an account requires a Russian passport (same report). From January 1, 2025, regional law in the occupied territories began requiring Russian citizenship to receive a pension (the June 2025 report)
• Health care: a Russian federal law of February 14, 2023 introduced mandatory Russian medical insurance in the occupied territories (its entry into force was postponed to January 1, 2025). Enrolling in the insurance requires a Russian passport, and without one, non-emergency free medical care is unavailable (the March 2024 report)
• Movement: there are cases of people holding a Ukrainian passport being subjected to strict searches at checkpoints, and being denied passage or detained (same report)
• Property: the occupation authorities are proceeding to transfer housing they deem “abandoned” into municipal ownership. Notices were issued for at least 16,295 housing units between December 2024 and May 2025, and the cumulative total since related laws were enacted in 2023–24 is nearly 30,000. Confirming ownership requires the person to appear in person and present a Russian passport, so those without one cannot prove ownership (the June 2025 report)

A special report on the occupied territories that Ukraine’s Ombudsman published in March 2025 likewise states that people without a Russian passport effectively become “foreigners” on their own land, draw the attention of Russian security agencies, and have their rights to housing, medical and social protection, property, education, and work restricted.

Get the passport, and conscription follows

Obtaining the passport does not remove the disadvantages. OHCHR points out that young men who obtain a Russian passport must report to a military registration office to be assessed for fitness to serve in the Russian armed forces. In the autumn conscription round Russia began on October 1, 2023, it included the four occupied oblasts for the first time. Men aged 18 to 27 can be conscripted for 12 months into an army fighting their own country.

For the conscription round from October 1, 2025, electronic call-up notices were issued through Russia’s administrative-services site “Gosuslugi,” and OHCHR states that this has raised the risk of residents of the occupied territories being conscripted. Article 51 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from compelling residents of occupied territory to serve in its armed forces, or from pressuring or propagandizing them into volunteering for that armed forces.

International law, and the number Russia has announced

OHCHR states that compelling residents of occupied territory to swear allegiance to the occupying power is prohibited under international humanitarian law (Article 45 of the 1907 Hague Regulations on Land Warfare), and that imposing the occupying power’s citizenship also falls under this prohibition. The March 2024 report called on Russia to stop measures compelling allegiance and to stop discriminating against Ukrainian citizens who have not taken Russian citizenship.

According to OHCHR’s June 2025 report, Russian authorities announced in March 2025 that they had issued Russian passports to 3.5 million people in the occupied territories. This figure was announced by Russia itself and has not been independently verified. The same report states that many people in the occupied territories whom OHCHR interviewed said they took Russian citizenship because they had no realistic alternative.

How Ukrainian law treats it

Ukraine does not recognize passports issued by Russia in the occupied territories. Article 9 of the 2014 law “On Ensuring the Rights and Freedoms of Citizens and the Legal Regime in the Temporarily Occupied Territory of Ukraine” (No. 1207-VII) voids documents issued by bodies created outside the law in the occupied territory, with an exception limited to documents certifying birth, death, and marriage and its dissolution.

On citizenship, an amending law (No. 4502-IX), adopted June 18, 2025 and taking effect January 16, 2026, revised Article 19 of the Citizenship Law. While an adult “voluntarily” acquiring the citizenship of an aggressor state is grounds for losing Ukrainian citizenship, the law provides that acquiring the aggressor state’s citizenship in the temporarily occupied territory — even where the person went through that state’s own application procedure — “shall not be considered voluntary acquisition.” The same applies to people who acquire that citizenship after being unlawfully transferred out of the country. This exception does not apply, however, where there is conduct threatening state security, such as spreading war propaganda or openly supporting the aggression.

Article 111-1 of the Criminal Code (“Collaboration Activity”) penalizes acts such as openly denying the aggression, voluntarily taking up a post within the occupation authorities’ bodies, and organizing political events in cooperation with the occupation authorities. Simply obtaining a Russian passport, by itself, is not among the acts listed in the article.

The citizenship and abduction of children is covered in The Arrest Warrant for President Putin Was Over the Abduction of Children, and how Japan treats Russia’s declarations of “annexation” in Crimea in 2014, Four Oblasts in 2022: Japan Recognizes Neither “Annexation”.