Russians Are Weaponizing Passports in Occupied Ukraine—U.K. Intel

Authorities in Ukrainian regions that were illegally annexed and are partially under the control of Russian forces are weaponizing passports, the British Ministry of Defense has said.

In its latest assessment of the conflict in Ukraine, which hit the 14-month mark on Monday, the ministry assessed that authorities in occupied areas of Ukraine are "almost certainly coercing the population to accept Russian Federation passports."

Four regions of Ukraine—the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia—were illegally annexed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in the fall of 2022 following "sham" referendums. Russia is not fully in control of any of the regions, and foreign governments, including the United States, said the move was illegitimate.

Former Ukrainian ombudswoman Lyudmila Denisova said weeks into the war that Ukrainian citizens forcibly deported to Russia were having their passports seized and replaced with Russian documentation.

Denisova, the Ukrainian Parliament's former commissioner for human rights, made the claims during an appearance on Russian-language Prague-based TV channel Nastoyashcheye Vremya (Current Time).

"Passports are taken away [from deported Ukrainians]. They [passports] are taken away in a filtration camp," Denisova said at the time.

The British defense ministry said on Monday that residents in Kherson have been warned that those who have not accepted a Russian passport by June 1 will be "deported" and their property seized.

"Russia is using passports as a tool in the 'Russification' of the occupied areas, as it did in Donetsk and Luhansk before the February 2022 invasion," the ministry said.

"Russia is likely expediating the integration of the occupied areas of Ukraine into the bureaucracy of the Russian Federation to help paint the invasion as a success, especially in the run-up to the 2024 presidential elections," it concluded.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in December that the process of integrating territories that Moscow annexed from Ukraine was in "full swing."

Since then, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin has signed a government order instructing the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service to set up 24 new penal colonies in the annexed regions, and the Kremlin said it would impose a Moscow time zone in the territories.

"In the near future, the DPR [the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic], LPR [the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic], Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts will be part of the second time zone, in which Moscow time operates," Russia's Ministry of Industry and Trade said on its Telegram channel in January.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials say an upcoming spring counteroffensive is aimed at liberating its occupied territories.

"I am sure that we will continue to liberate temporarily occupied territories, as was done in Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Kherson, in the city of Sumy and Zmiinyi Island," Ukraine's Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told Estonian channel ERR in an interview published late last month.

Newsweek has contacted Russia's defense ministry by email for comment.

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