Passportization (Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia)

Passportization 🇲🇩 🇺🇦 🇬🇪
Location: Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia
Definition: Granting citizenship to a large number of people in a different country to destabilize it
Keywords: Moldova – Ukraine – Georgia – FSU – Russia – Scheme – De facto states – Transnistria – Donbas – Crimea – Abkhazia – Ossetia – Passport – Poverty – Weaponization
Clusters: Survival – Normative ambivalence – Motivational ambivalence
Author: Margherita Gobbat
Affiliation: PhD Researcher at Center for Social Sciences, Tbilisi, Georgia

By Margherita Gobbat, PhD Researcher at Center for Social Sciences, Tbilisi, Georgia

Passportization is a procedure carried out by a state that results in a significant number of foreign citizens living in a different country gaining that state's nationality. Similar passportization strategies were recorded in Central and Eastern Europe after World War I (Hoffmann and Chochia 2018), and through the naturalization of Hungarian communities in Romania, Serbia, and Ukraine (Brewis). Yet nowadays passportization is primarily a strategy of the Russian Federation to destabilize regions of Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. The main goal of Russian passportization is to extend Russia's influence and geopolitical power in the post-Soviet realm (Nagashima 2019) establishing extraterritorial governance (Burkhardt et al. 2022) while declaring the protection of its citizens living abroad. According to Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova and the International Fact-Finding Commission on the Georgian Conflict (IIFFMCG), the practices of Russian passportization are in violation of international law. Passportization is not only a practice coordinated and enforced by a state authority, but also a demand-driven practice where individuals request the passport of another country for several personal reasons, including to improve their livelihood.

According to the Legal act of 2002, Russian citizenship can be obtained by birth, naturalisation (a minimum of five years of permanent residence in Russia, economic independence, promises of lawful behaviour as well as a strong command of the Russian language), restoration of citizenship, or through the citizenship of one’s parents (Russian Federal law NO 115-FZ of July 25, 2002). While this law increased the difficulty of former Soviet nationals to get Russian citizenship, it also created a loophole that allowed people residing in the breakaway territories, the de facto states of Abkhazia (Georgia), South Ossetia (Georgia), Transnistria (Moldova), and Donetsk and Luhansk (Ukraine) to become Russian citizens via a simplified procedure (Nagashima 2019). These entities cannot issue an internationally valid passport and hence, all residents face economic and security problems.

Between 1998 and 2001, the Congress of Russian Communities in Abkhazia started collecting applications and documents from Abkhazian residents and bringing them to Moscow to obtain Russian citizenship. Similarly, South Ossetia began the process of passportization thanks to the close kinship networks between its residents and the people of North Ossetia, part of the Russian Federation (Nagashima 2019). For both regions, Russia established administrative offices functioning on an ad hoc basis and issuing passports at a rapid pace (Grönsund 2020). By the mid-2000s, approximately 90 per cent of inhabitants of South Ossetia and Abkhazia had become Russian citizens, either by birth or by passportization (Krasniqi 2018). Many locals were eager to get Russian citizenship to have access to better healthcare and education systems as well as to obtain the right to travel and emigrate. Russian pensions were at the time far higher than Georgian ones. This right to social welfare is not accompanied by common obligations, as Abkhazians and South Ossetian are excused from army duty and taxation, privileges that they would not have as Georgian citizens (Mühlfried 2010). Others choose to reject Georgian passports for political reasons (Nagashima 2019). After the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, Abkhaz authorities insisted on having all residents use Abkhaz passports and only allowing dual citizenship with Russia, thus creating problems for Georgian passport holders living in the Gali district, unable, for instance, to register marriages, births, and proprieties (de Waal and von Twickel 2020). Having a Russian passport lets South Ossetians and those living on the Georgian-controlled side cross the borders without the risk of being detained (Otruba 2019). Every year, several Georgians that need to cross the border to breed the cattle, harvest their crops, visit a relative, a church, or a cemetery are arrested by Russian and Ossetian forces.

A similar problem is faced by Tatars and dissidents in Crimea, who often feel obliged to obtain a Russian passport to carry out everyday life practices. The en masse issuing of Russian passports in Crimea started before the annexation by Russia in 2014, even though Ukrainian law prohibits multiple citizenships (Rotaru 2018). For instance, people without a Russian passport in Crimea can be denied a job, a mortgage, healthcare, and the right to enrol their children in local schools (Glasius 2018). Therefore, passportization also involves elements of indirect blackmailing where those excluded do not participate in accessing resources, peer pressure, and selective law enforcement.

In Transnistria, Russian citizenship is considered a guarantee of security for the local people (Hoffmann and Chochia 2018), but many people have taken advantage of the opportunity to get a Moldovan or even a Romanian passport allowing them to travel easily throughout the EU (de Waal and von Twickel 2020).

The Russian Federation started the ongoing passportization in Eastern Ukraine in April 2019, in the so-called ‘Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics’. Russia has opened two offices in the Rostov Oblast, where Russian and Donetsk authorities are carrying documents beyond the border. Applying for Russian citizenship does not always imply political intent. Instead, the applicants' principal motivations are to qualify for Russian old-age pensions because Ukraine cannot provide state services in Russian occupied zones. Other reasons to obtain a Russian passport are finding a job in Russia, having higher salaries, studying in Russia, pursuing business opportunities, and, for many of those implicated in war crimes, ensuring impunity (Socor 2019). Because most recipients do not own properties in Russia, these passports are frequently issued without formal registration, resulting in bureaucratic obstacles (Isak 2021). During the pandemic, the Russian borders were closed to non-Russian residents. As a result, many inhabitants of Donbas have applied for a Russian passport, fearing not being able to move between the Russian borders and the separatist Republics (Kirillov 2020). The Kremlin also justified the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine to protect the Russian passport holders' residents in the Donbas (Bescotti et ali. 2022).

To conclude, passportization may produce and corroborate other informal practices like vote-buying. For instance, in Eastern Ukraine, holders of Russian passports were transported by bus to Russia to vote in the Russian Parliamentary elections of 2021. Other relevant practices involving issuing passports are the possibility of moving more freely between borders hence undertaking small-scale smuggling and earning money abroad (Zarobitchanstvo).

Funding

This research was realized as part of the EU Commission Horizon2020 MSCA Innovative Training Networks (MSCA-ITN) project MARKETS: Mapping Uncertainties, Challenges and Future Opportunities of Emerging Markets: Informal Barriers, Business Environments and Future Trends in Eastern Europe, The Caucasus and Central Asia, Grant agreement ID: 861034.

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