“Not only residents of Donbass apply for our citizenship, but also residents of the rest of Ukraine.
In the period from 2016 to 2020, nearly 978 thousand citizens of Ukraine received the citizenship of the Russian Federation, "he said in an interview with the French edition of Politician Internationale.
He recalled that the decision on a simplified procedure for issuing passports was adopted as a humanitarian measure after the blockade of Donbass was imposed and its residents were affected in civil rights.
“The decision to issue passports cannot be viewed as an instrument or signs of the subsequent inclusion of the DPR and LPR into Russia,” Kozak stressed.
As previously stated in the Russian Foreign Ministry, the granting of citizenship is the sovereign prerogative of sovereign states, which is not limited by international law.
The humanitarian gesture on the part of Moscow in this case is a consequence of Ukraine's failure to fulfill its obligations under the Minsk agreements, they stressed.
In April 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on the simplified acquisition of citizenship by residents of the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk People's Republics.