Ukrainian authorities warned Friday that in the face of «a lack of high demand for Russian passports in the occupied regions,» Moscow is maneuvering to forcibly assign their citizenship to the inhabitants of Zaporiyia, one of the regions that recently held a disputed referendum on accession to Russia.
«The lack of massive demand for Russian passports in the temporarily occupied regions (…) has led them to make a decision to automatically impose Russian citizenship on the residents of these territories,» Ukrainian mayor of Energodar, Dimitro Orlov, has told.
Orlov’s announcement is a response to the Russian authorities who stated that as of October 30 they would consider all residents of the city as Russian citizens, the mayor himself explained on his Telegram profile.
«Whoever wants to renounce this ‘citizenship’ will have to write a statement to the migration service of the Russian Federation in their own handwriting. At least, those are now the strange fantasies passed on by the invaders,» he has said.
Orlov is confident that the Armed Forces of Ukraine will «settle accounts with the ambitious plans» as already happened in the Kharkov regions and is currently happening in Kherson. «Very soon there won’t be a single racist left in the Ukrainian Energodar,» he said.
