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For more than three years, each time ryna, 67, and her husband passed beyond their front door, the Ukrainian couple feared for their lives.
They could be taken in bombings or in a drone strike – or end up being questioned by security agents under the threat of a weapon while they were trying to cross a checkpoint in the southern part of the Kherson region, an area still under Russian control.
The couple, who lived under occupation since the first days of the invasion of Russia, initially refused to obtain a Russian passport while Moscow made more and more difficult to survive without them.
“Everything was becoming more and more difficult,” Iyna said in an interview with CBC News last month. “You felt like you were in a cage.”
Iryna, that CBC News agreed to identify only by its first name because of its concerns concerning the punishment of Russia, said that she and her husband thought that they had no choice but to obtain Russian passports last year. It was at this point that local stores closed and it became impossible to shop without going through a Russian checkpoint.
Like many other Ukrainians, she and her husband accepted Russian citizenship because they feared what would happen if they did not do so.
Mass distribution of passports
This is part of the fact that human rights experts consider a generalized coercion campaign designed to extend Moscow’s influence on occupied territories, the areas that it requires that Ukraine renounces within the framework of any potential peace agreement.
At the same time, the Kremlin refused to implement a 30-day ceasefire, and the Russian forces recently launched a new offensive to try to take more Ukrainian land.
According to Moscow, 3.5 million residents living in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson received passports.
While Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the country had “practically completed” the mass of passports in these regions, “he signed a presidential decree in March to target the few Ukrainians who still hold.
The Ukrainians who live in Russia, or the areas he claims to control, must legalize their status by September 10 – or leave their home.
Although these Ukrainian regions are not entirely controlled by Russia, Moscow tried to justify its claim by staging “fake” Referendums in September 2022 which were sentenced by world leaders.
His passport policy is an extension of this strategy, considered as an attempt to weaken Ukrainian sovereignty and a clear sign that Moscow does not intend to abandon the territory he occupies now.
Russia has already used its accelerated passport system as a geopolitical tool in other areas, including in the Rupture regions Abkhazia and southern Ossetia in Georgia and the separatist Transdnietria Moldova region.
After Russia illegally annexed the Crimea peninsula in 2014, it distributed Russian passports in a generalized campaign.
Life under occupation
At the start of the large -scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia on February 24, 2022, Iryna and her husband lived in a chalet on an island in the Dnipro River Delta in the Kherson region.
The region was seized by Russia during the first week of war.
When Ukrainian forces withdraw Being part of Kherson, of which Kherson City in November 2022, said that the soldiers of Russia ordered him to him and other residents to evacuate further south.
She and her husband ended up living in someone else’s house in the village of Stara Zbur’Ivka, located along the south side of the Dnipro river.
They tried to avoid interacting with the Russian soldiers, Iyna told CBC News, but having to cross a Russian checkpoint each time they needed grocery store or supplies meant that they would be grilled by those who manage it.
“They kept asking” why don’t you take a passport, are you waiting for the Ukrainian army to come back? “,” Said Iryna.
On an occasion, she said, a soldier pointed a weapon on her husband’s head by questioning her.
“It was no longer possible without them,” she said about a Russian passport. “It was simply dangerous.”
When Iryna and her husband decided to leave Kherson in March, they used their Russian passports while they were traveling in Crimea and then in Russia. At this stage, she said, a local underground network of volunteers helped them return to Ukraine crossing the Belarus.
Now living in Dnipro, the couple said they did not use the passports that Russia had imposed on them.
Passport policy
Even before Russia launched its large -scale invasion, Moscow was trying to attract Ukrainians with citizenship.
Poutine signed a decree Accelerate the process for those who live in the self -proclaimed regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, who were then controlled by separatists supported by Russia.
In July 2022, the Kremlin announced that all Ukrainian citizens were eligible to receive passports As part of the accelerated scheme.
According to Human Rights Watch, passports were distributed by a illegal pressure campaignin which the Russian authorities have threatened to hold Ukrainian citizens or to confiscate goods if they did not accept passports.
Russia has made more and more impossible to live without the document in the territory it occupies, which requires it to access state services, including retirement, education and health care.
During a period of six months in 2023, doctors of the International Human Rights Organization documented at least 15 cases of people refused medical care, as they lived in the occupied territories and had no Russian passport.
The group said that some hospitals have even created an office so that desperate patients can fill out the necessary documents.
Advise Ukrainian citizens
Ivan, coordinator of the yellow ribbon resistance campaign which is active in the occupied territories, told CBC News that during the first years of the Russian invasion, he and other volunteers advised residents to know how to avoid accepting a Russian passport.
CBC News agreed not to identify him by his family name, taking into account his work in the occupied territories and the possibility of reprisals from the Russian authorities.
In 2023, the resistance group carried out an information campaign on the stages that Ukrainian citizens could take to prevent their apartments or other real estate be confiscated if they had no Russian citizenship.
But he said Russia has increased restrictions, the message has changed.
“We recommend that people take a Russian passport because you mainly need it if you want to survive,” he said in a zoom interview in April. “”You could be stopped or detained … just because you don’t have it. “”
Although he and others try to reassure residents that obtaining a passport is “not serious” and that they can later abandon their Russian citizenship, he recognizes that this could mean that men who are new citizens could be written in the country’s army.
Ivan, a graduate of the university in information technology in 2021, lived in Kherson City when she was invaded by Russia. At the time, he had lost his Ukrainian passport, so he ended up publishing a Russian legal document.
After the release of Kherson City, Ivan went to the northern part of the country, before later taking a route through Russia to enter the part occupied by Russia of the Ukrainian territory of Zaporizhzhia.
He told CBC News that he had parents living in the region where he needed to bring passports, and he helped some local activists there in non-violent resistance campaigns by linking yellow ribbons to trees and distributing information brochures.
But he recognizes that he only knows a few people in the occupied areas that have not yet taken a Russian passport.
“Even they know that they will have to accept a passport if the occupation continues.”
