While evidently overstating, Crimean statistics happily reports that 98% of Crimeans have already become owners of Russian passports. Really a lot of residents of the occupied peninsula had to take “red books” but not because they wanted it very much or they dreamed to become citizens of Russia all their live. They did it in order not to lose their property and sources of income, to receive due medical service and so on.
Unfortunately, the absence of the Russian passport can cause serious problems for a resident of Crimea. For example, Crimeans who refused to apply for the Russian passport lost rights for medical aid: hospitals do not accept patients with Ukrainians passports and providing a medical aid for such patients is possible just in case of the emergency treatment. In confirmation of this fact announcements explaining the order of the medical treatment in medical institutions appeared in hospitals of Crimea. That’s why Crimeans who didn’t manage or didn’t want to receive a passport of the citizen of Russia complain that they can’t receive a free medical attention in municipal hospitals. People without Russian passports are massively directed to private institutions but their services aren’t affordable for the most of people. Because of inability to live to the fullest as a citizen of Ukraine in Crimea, many residents of the peninsula keep on moving to the mainland and their residential and working places are taken by the native born Russian newcomers.
Fortunately, acquiring the Russian citizenship not by choice does not cause a loss of the Ukrainian citizenship. This condition is prescribed in the law “On implementation of the rights and freedoms and legal regime on the temporary occupied territory of Ukraine” (Art. 5. part 4.) The State Migration Service of Ukraine assures Crimeans that Russia can’t make any decisions regarding the termination of the Ukrainian citizenship of the Crimean residents and informs them that according to the law of Ukraine it is possible to surrender the citizenship of Ukraine only by a personal petition addressed to the President that applies to the international diplomatic institution (that Ukraine can’t have in Crimea by definition). People who stayed in Crimea hope that the President of Ukraine will not cut them out from the Ukrainian citizenship with his signature as a part of the Ukrainian society would like to do blaming Crimeans for treason of the motherland.
To judge a Crimean person for receiving the Russian passport one needs to come into the world of the Crimean graduate who can not receive a school certificate without this passport or an invalid person who can’t get proper medical treatment or a road haulier who is forced to change his car license plate and his driver license and so on. Neither the state nor ordinary Ukrainians are able to provide housing and work for those Crimeans who are ready to lose their homes, possessions and income to avoid the forcefully imposed Russian citizenship.
