75 percent of LPR residents get Russian passports - Interior Ministry

Russian passports have been issued to three-quarters of the population of the Lugansk People’s Republic, said Russian Interior Ministry Migration Department Deputy Director Kirill Adzinov.

 

“The LPR shows the highest passportization rate among the four new regions,” Adzinov said at a meeting between Russia’s Federation Council committee on social policy and LPR officials in Lugansk.  “We’ve already passed the peak period of passport applications.”

 

The LPR interior Ministry operates 36 passport centers across the Republic. “We’re making all efforts to complete passport issuance by the end of August,” he said.

 

Passportization of low-mobility citizens has a priority, and there are problems with the availability of this service in recently liberated areas.  “We’re ready to step up fieldwork as we have enough equipment and personnel,” Adzinov said.

 

According to Director of the Russian Interior Ministry Migration Department for the LPR Andrey Golodok, specialists had accepted more than 800,000 Russian passport applications.

 

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On April, 24, 2019, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree easing citizenship rules for residents of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. Lugansk launched the first Russian passport office on May 6; the first group of LPR residents received Russian passports on June 14. On April 24, 2020, Putin signed the law exempting Donbass Republics residents from paying the state fee for conferment of citizenship.

 

LPR Head Leonid Pasechnik said that by June 2022, more than 284,000 LPR residents had been granted Russian citizenship.

 

The Lugansk People’s Republic acceded to Russia on September 30, 2022 following the unification referendum. On October 4, President Vladimir Putin signed the federal constitutional law on “On the Accession of the LPR to Russia and Establishment of a New Federal Subject - Lugansk People's Republic.”  In this connection, citizens of LPR, Ukraine and stateless persons as well as their underage children who permanently resided in the LPR as of that date obtained Russian citizenship.*i*ie