Effect of new law — 216,000 granted citizienship in total, 2.5 times more than January-April last year
Related: Russia Makes It Super Easy for Ukrainians (and Some Others) to Get Russian Citizenship
Machine translated from Russian.
Russia granted citizenship to 215.9 thousand people in the first four months of 2020. This is 2.5 times more than for the same period last year, follows from the statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In January-April 2019, 85.9 thousand people were granted citizenship.
The bulk of the people who received citizenship are citizens of Ukraine, RBC reports referring to the service of the international audit and consulting network FinExpertiza. From the beginning of 2016 to the first quarter of 2020, their share amounted to 46.6%, about 677 thousand people. And in the first quarter of 2020, their share reached 67%.
Recall that Russian President Vladimir Putin in April 2019 signed a decree on a simplified procedure for obtaining Russian citizenship for residents of some areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of Ukraine (self-proclaimed DPR and LPR). In July, he expanded the decree to all residents of the two regions.
In April 2020, Mr. Putin signed a law allowing foreigners to obtain Russian citizenship without giving up a foreign one. Prior to this, when applying for citizenship, foreigners had to confirm that they applied to the authorized bodies in their country with a statement on renunciation of citizenship.
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