Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said that Russia is issuing passports in the temporarily occupied territories to make repressions against Ukrainians legal.
Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar said this on Telegram, Ukrinform reports.
“Passports are a hybrid weapon of the Russian Federation. Russia is fighting not only with missiles, artillery, propaganda, information and psychological operations, but also with its passports. This is a targeted, well-developed, large-scale campaign that they were implementing before 2014 as one of the elements of preparations for war,” said Maliar.
Now the Russians are using passportization to strengthen their criminal regime in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine.
According to Maliar, the enemies act in two ways. On the one hand, they encourage Ukrainian citizens to take the initiative and get a passport on their own. On the other hand, they intimidate, threaten with violence and physically force people to obtain a Russian passport.
A Russian passport is a one-way ticket (death). After receiving their passports, they are sent to the front to fight for Russia. This has been happening to Ukrainians from the occupied Donbas since 2014.