President Volodymyr Zelensky announced the introduction of a draft law that will allow people with Ukrainian citizenship to also hold citizenship in other nations, except for citizens of the Russian Federation.
The new multiple citizenship law will allow foreigners fighting for Ukraine and the ethnic Ukrainian diaspora to hold a Kyiv-issued passport without renouncing their citizenship elsewhere. The sole exception is “except for citizens of the aggressor country.”
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During his address on the Day of Unity, Zelensky said: “Everyone who has Ukrainian blood in their veins and a free heart beating in their chest. Ukrainians by origin, who have long proven that they are Ukrainians in spirit. And after many years of waiting, they should finally become Ukrainians by passport.”
“Today I am submitting to the Verkhovna Rada a key draft law that will allow the adoption of comprehensive legislative amendments and the introduction of multiple citizenship,” Zelensky said.
According to Zelensky, the adoption of the law will allow all ethnic Ukrainians and their descendants, who “during various emigration waves, were forced to leave their homeland and ended up in Europe, the United States, Canada, countries of Asia and Latin America,” as well as “foreign volunteers who took up arms to defend Ukraine, all those who fight for Ukraine’s freedom” to obtain Ukrainian citizenship.
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“All those who help us despite being hundreds and thousands of kilometers away from their homeland…” Zelensky said. “All those who fight for Ukraine’s freedom as if it were their homeland. And Ukraine will become such for them. For everyone who can feel that ‘being in Ukraine’ means ‘being at home’ – not as tourists, but as citizens. Citizens of a great, united, single Ukraine.”
Zelensky also signed the Decree “On the Territories of the Russian Federation Historically Inhabited by Ukrainians.”
About the decree, he said: “We must take steps not only to strengthen the unity of Ukraine and our people, but also to act for the unity of rights and freedoms, the truth about Ukrainians, the truth about us, and the truth about our history.
“This is the restoration of truth about the historical past for the sake of Ukraine’s future.”
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