Putin orders Ukrainians to ‘legalize’ immigration status or leave Russia by September

President Vladimir Putin ordered Ukrainian citizens in Russia to either “legalize” their immigration status or leave the country by September 10, according to a presidential decree published on Thursday.

Ukrainians without “legal reasons for staying or staying in Russia” must leave unless they “run their legal status” within the next six months and 10 days, the decree states.

The order seems to apply to Ukrainian passports from four partially occupied regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – which Russia claims to have annexed in 2022 as well as from Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014.

In recent years, Russian authorities have been pushing Ukrainians into occupied territories to take on Russian citizenship. Putin claimed earlier this month that the government had “practically completed” the mass issue of Russian passports in these regions last year.

According to the Interior Minister Vladimir Kolocoltev, 3.5 million Russian passports have been issued to Ukrainian nationals living in territories seized by the Russian military

Ukraine has condemned Russia’s so -called “pasisization” as “illegal” and a “gross violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty.” Western governments and human rights groups have condemned the move, while the EU does not recognize the passports as valid travel documents.

Putin’s decree follows the introduction of a set of migration laws last month that made it easier for Russian authorities to deport migrants.

The latest order also requires foreign citizens who arrived in the occupied Ukrainian regions before Russia’s annexation in September 2022 to undergo drug and HIV testing before June 10.