Several parties in the Russian Duma called for a fast-track citizenship procedure for Ukrainians. While it is still uncertain if the governmental majority will embrace the idea, the consulate in Simferopol already issues passports and pictures of officers from ‘Bercut’ – the recently disbanded Ukrainian riot police – appeared in on The Guardian website.

According to Dr. Dejan Stjepanović – an expert in citizenship and nationalism at the University of Edinburgh – this is in a striking similarity with the events in the former Yugoslavia where kin-states handed out citizenship and kept break-away regions’ militias on the their payroll. 

More recently, the Russian intervention in Georgia in 2008 was also preceded by handing out passports in South Ossetia.

 

Read more details from RAPSI.

See the Guardian picture here.