Passport coercion

"If you want to live, get a passport," the doctor said.

For Mykola, the decision had nothing to do with changing his identity. He had lived under occupation long enough to understand how daily life was changing. But he had resisted taking Russian documents. Faced with worsening pain and the possibility of a life-threatening condition, he accepted a Russian passport for one reason only: he wanted to survive.

His story is one of dozens documented by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), showing how Russia has used citizenship as a tool to force people to adopt Russian passports and influence their daily life in the occupied territories.

Petro (not his real name) slowly came under pressure.

Living with diabetes, he depended on regular insulin and daily medical care. For months, he tried to avoid obtaining a Russian passport, hoping there would be another way to continue receiving treatment. But every visit to the hospital brought new restrictions. Eventually, doctors informed him that without Russian citizenship he would no longer receive the treatment and insulin he needs.

"It is not merely difficult to live in occupied territory without a Russian passport, it is impossible to survive," he said.

Like Mykola, Petro says the decision to take Russian documents was never about loyalty or politics. The passport did not represent a new national identity. It became the price of staying alive.

For mother of two Olha, who lives in Kherson region, the pressure to take a Russian passport was not to do with her health. Instead, she was told that unless she submitted, she may lose her children.

Her employer warned that refusing Russian citizenship would cost her a job. And without work, she would lose her income, on which she fed her children. Slowly, the threats started escalating.

Local Russian authorities told her that if she continued refusing, social services could remove her two sons and put them into state custody. Thousands of children in the occupied territories have been abducted.

"I postponed getting a Russian passport for as long as I could. But when they threatened to take away my sons and place them in state custody, I understood that the threat was serious and that I had no real choice."

She decided to accept a Russian passport. For her, the risk of losing her family was too high.

The stories of Mykola, Petro and Olha are different, but they reveal the same pattern. Healthcare, employment and even the right to raise one's children have become conditional on accepting Russian citizenship.

Since Russia's full-scale invasion in 2022, Moscow has systematically replaced Ukrainian administrative, banking, healthcare, education, employment and social-security systems in occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions with Russian ones. According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, this process accelerated in 2023, when residents without Russian citizenship began to be treated as "foreigners" under Russian law and were required to obtain Russian passports or otherwise "legalise" their stay.

Russia's Ministry of the Interior claimed that 3.5 million residents of occupied Ukrainian territories had received Russian passports in March 2025. Many, like Olha, Petro and Mykola, have done so because they had no alternative.

"Without a Russian passport, residents could not access healthcare, education, employment, pensions and social benefits, banking, property rights, mobile services and freedom of movement," said Danielle Bell, Head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.

"This passportization policy left Ukrainians in occupied territory with a stark choice: accept the nationality of the occupying power or lose the ability to live safely and with dignity in their own homes."

The pressure extends well beyond hospitals and workplaces. According to HRMMU, young men who accepted Russian passports became vulnerable to military registration. Pensioners increasingly needed Russian citizenship to receive pension payments. Even employees at the occupied Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant were pressured to obtain Russian passports and sign contracts with Russia's state nuclear corporation, Rosatom.

Human rights defenders say this is not a series of isolated abuses but a deliberate policy.

"They created conditions under which you simply cannot live in the occupied territories without having a Russian passport," said Alona Lunova, Advocacy Director at the ZMINA Human Rights Centre.

"Russia is using restrictions on access to rights as an incentive to obtain Russian passports."

Legal experts argue that the policy violates international humanitarian law. "If the occupying power makes the population of the occupied territory its citizens, it can use them as its citizens, for example, for mobilisation," said Olga Poiedynok, a professor of international law.

For all three Ukrainians who appeared to be under Russian occupation, the discussion is not about international law. It is about managing to live one more day under Russian occupation. For Mykola, a passport meant surgery. For Petro, it meant insulin. For Olha, it meant keeping her children. Under Russian occupation, citizenship has become less a matter of identity than a condition for survival.