{"id":728170,"date":"2026-01-29T08:25:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T08:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/728170\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T08:25:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T08:25:11","slug":"youre-not-human-a-legal-limbo-for-russian-nationals-in-ukraine-russia-ukraine-war-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/728170\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018You\u2019re not human:\u2019 A legal limbo for Russian nationals in Ukraine | Russia-Ukraine war News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013<\/strong> Taras always resented his dark-red Russian passport \u2013 and was happy to replace it with a blue Ukrainian one. But it was a process that took him 11 years and two trials.<\/p>\n

He is one of more than 150,000 Russian nationals living in Ukraine as the war with Russia continues. Most are relatives or spouses of Ukrainians or were born in Ukraine. Some are dissidents seeking refuge or volunteers with the Ukrainian army.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

They go through several rounds of bureaucratic quagmire to have their residence permits renewed or get Ukrainian citizenship, and face mistreatment anywhere they have to show the colour of their passport.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have a red passport here, you\u2019re not human, even if you have Ukrainian blood, speak Ukrainian and donate to the armed forces of Ukraine,\u201d the bespectacled 45-year-old graphic designer told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Taras asked to withhold his last name that he shares with his siblings living in Russia, because he does not want them to \u201cget into more trouble than they already are\u201d because of their Ukrainian background.<\/p>\n

Born in the city of Poltava in Soviet Ukraine in 1980, Taras, the son of a colonel, grew up 500km (310 miles) to the east, in what is now the western Russian city of Bryansk; his father headed a tank regiment.<\/p>\n

He spent his summers in a village outside Poltava, where his grandparents taught him to speak Ukrainian and \u201cbe a regular Cossack\u201d, Taras said with a smile, referring to the medieval warrior caste.<\/p>\n

He received the Russian passport after turning 16 and studied art history and design in St Petersburg, Russia\u2019s former imperial capital and President Vladimir Putin\u2019s hometown.<\/p>\n

With a freelance job to design brochures, posters and calendars, he decided to move to Poltava a year after Russia\u2019s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.<\/p>\n

Getting residence papers and a \u201cpermit to migrate\u201d and obtaining citizenship was easy, but he made a mistake of \u201cprocrastinating for too long\u201d about getting the blue passport.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a stupid mistake that cost me a lot of time, money and nerves,\u201d Taras sighed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI nagged him every day for years, but he waited until the full-scale [invasion] began\u201d in 2022, his wife Tetiana, whom he married in 2019, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Kyiv immediately severed diplomatic ties with Moscow, complicating a key condition for Taras\u2019s full-fledged Ukrainian citizenship.<\/p>\n

Until June 2025, Ukraine banned dual citizenship, and aspiring nationals had two years to prove they had withdrawn from their previous citizenship.<\/p>\n

In the case of Russians, they have to prove they face no criminal or administrative charges, have no debt and are not registered in somebody\u2019s apartment or house.<\/p>\n

To submit and get the papers, Taras took an overnight train to neighbouring Moldova, where Russian embassy officials snubbed his requests, \u201clost\u201d his papers and whispered \u201ctraitor\u201d and \u201cfascist\u201d, Taras said.<\/p>\n

He was luckier than many other Russians living in Ukraine.<\/p>\n

There have been cases of Ukraine\u2019s migration services refusing to renew expired residence permits, Kyiv-based migration lawyer Daria Tarasenko told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

The stranded Russians\u2019 problems worsen when their passport expires. It takes up to three trips to a third country to renew it, submit it and receive the documents to get the passport they hope to abandon soon.<\/p>\n

And if the two-year deadline is not met, there have been cases when the migration service strips people of their Ukrainian citizenship, Tarasenko said.<\/p>\n

She said she had won two cases when courts deemed the decisions illegal, and several similar cases were pending.<\/p>\n

In late 2024, the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine\u2019s lower house of parliament, voted to change the migration law, allowing Russian nationals to wait for the war\u2019s end plus one more month to start the termination of their red passports, she said.<\/p>\n

By that time, Taras was tired of trains to Moldova and endless bickering inside the Russian embassy\u2019s sprawling, white building.<\/p>\n

He was told that a \u201cdeclarative rejection\u201d of his Russian citizenship could suffice, but the migration services rejected his \u201cdeclaration\u201d.<\/p>\n

He sued them, and a court ruled that he could finally get the blue passport.<\/p>\n

The Poltava migration service disagreed, and Taras sued again. This time, the court ruled that the officials in charge of issuing his passport should be fined.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd as soon as it became money out of their pocket, they were like, \u2018Good, come get the passport,\u2019\u201d Taras said.<\/p>\n

He did \u2013 last August.<\/p>\n

He cannot be drafted because of severe, progressing myopia coupled with astigmatism, while many other men with Russian passports prefer to hold on to their residence permits and obtain their Ukrainian passports after the war.<\/p>\n

Others are so desperate that they resort to symbolic vandalism.<\/p>\n

In early January, Andriy Kramar, an advertising executive in Kyiv, burned his wife Valery\u2019s Russian passport on a gas stove in the kitchen of their apartment in Hostomel, a suburb that was briefly seized by Russia in 2022.<\/p>\n

They live with their newborn daughter, Oleksandra, amid days-long blackouts caused by Russian shelling and with no running water.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat alone could drive you crazy,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Kramar posted the video of the burning passport on Facebook, tagging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u2019s administration and adding: \u201cGive my wife a normal passport!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013 Taras always resented his dark-red Russian passport \u2013 and was happy to replace it with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":728171,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,12,332,7661,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-728170","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-russia","12":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","13":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115977435507985509","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728170\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/728171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}