The visa-free regime with the EU will be available to all holders of Ukrainian biometric passports, including tens of thousands of residents of Crimea
As noted in its publication by BBC, a discussion continues in Kyiv about whether to allow residents of Crimea, which under Ukrainian law is an "occupied territory," to fully use the visa-free regime.
"I don't think anyone can say exactly how many people in Crimea hold both Ukrainian and Russian passports," Dmytro Tymchuk, a member of the Ukrainian parliament and the committee on national security and defense, told the BBC.
In March 2014, after the annexation of Crimea, the Russian parliament passed a law under which Ukrainian citizens living on the peninsula were recognized as Russian citizens. Those who did not wish to acquire Russian citizenship had to notify the competent authorities. Those who did not do so are automatically considered by Russia as "its own," even if they have not physically received Russian passports or if they still hold valid Ukrainian documents.
In the spring of 2014, Kyiv passed its own law, under which the "forced automatic acquisition" of Russian citizenship by Crimeans "is not recognized by Ukraine and is not grounds for loss of Ukrainian citizenship."
According to experts, the vast majority of Crimean residents have received Russian passports: some out of patriotic motives, others because having these documents greatly simplifies life on the peninsula. But equally, hundreds of thousands of Crimeans continue to be Ukrainian citizens, with the blue passport kept both by pro-Ukrainian residents of Crimea and by supporters of the peninsula's annexation to Russia.
"I wouldn't say I feel like a Ukrainian citizen, but at the same time, I don't really feel like a Russian citizen either... It seems to me that many people [living in Crimea] have ended up in some kind of intermediate state, where we are no longer Ukrainians, but many do not feel Russian either," Oksana, a 24-year-old resident of Sevastopol, told the BBC. In March 2014, she, like all her acquaintances and relatives, voted in the referendum not recognized by the international community for the annexation of Crimea to Russia. However, unlike some Crimeans, she did not demonstratively destroy her Ukrainian passport: "It would be illogical to renounce Ukrainian citizenship, because you never know when it might be needed."
Soon after the "referendum," it turned out that one of the areas where a Ukrainian passport might be needed was for Crimeans traveling abroad—particularly to Western countries.
In 2014, all Western consulates operating on the peninsula were closed: the international community did not recognize the annexation of Crimea to Russia. Accordingly, Western countries did not recognize the conversion of Crimeans to Russian citizenship or the issuance of Russian passports to them. As a result, obtaining a visa for travel to the West using a Russian passport issued in Crimea proved extremely problematic.
Screenshot from the official website of the German Embassy in Ukraine
Embassies of Western states both in Ukraine and Russia inform applicants on their websites: residents of Crimea, regardless of their citizenship, must apply for visas at diplomatic missions in Kyiv.
Screenshot from the official website of the US Embassy in Russia
An employee of a Moscow travel agency tells the BBC that she knows of cases where holders of Russian passports issued in Crimea received Schengen visas, albeit after undergoing additional procedures. "In general, all consulates advise obtaining visas using a Ukrainian passport if possible, because they are more favorably [treated]," she sums up.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly called this practice by Western countries "visa genocide" of Crimeans and said that Moscow is waging "heavy battles" with Brussels to change this situation. However, the results of these battles are not yet visible.
Meanwhile, in the unspoken competition between Russian and Ukrainian passports for Crimeans, the latter gains one more argument. This Sunday, June 11, the long-awaited visa-free travel regime for Ukrainians to European Union countries will come into effect. The innovation will apply to all citizens of Ukraine, including residents of Crimea who retain Ukrainian documents.
One clarification: only holders of biometric Ukrainian passports, which Kyiv began issuing in January 2015, i.e., after the annexation of the peninsula, will be able to travel to Europe without visas. Has this become an obstacle for those Crimeans who wished to obtain new-style documents?
According to data from the State Migration Service of Ukraine (SMSU)—the body authorized to issue passports—it appears not. The agency reported that, starting from January 2015, Ukrainian citizens registered in Crimea and Sevastopol have obtained about 47,000 Ukrainian international passports. At the same time, the SMSU noted that not all of these documents are biometric, and that some holders of new passports are only registered in Crimea while actually living in the part of Ukraine controlled by Kyiv.
"My old passport was expiring, and I often travel to Kyiv for work. On one of my trips, I got a new passport, biometric. Without any problems or delays. Very cool," says Ivan, a 45-year-old resident of Simferopol. However, most Crimeans, according to the SMSU, obtain international passports in the Kherson region—the closest region of Ukraine to the annexed peninsula.
“Here in Kherson, we see a situation where buses pull up to the State Migration Service unit every hour, Crimeans get out and join the queue. Local residents sometimes just walk out saying, ‘It’s unclear whether this is the Kherson office or the Crimean one,’” BBC is told by Alexei Tilnenko, coordinator of the Kherson branch of the civic initiative “KrymSOS.”
The State Migration Service emphasizes: legally, the procedure for issuing passports is the same for all citizens of Ukraine, and no special conditions for obtaining biometric documents for Crimeans are provided.
Another matter is that not everyone likes this situation. Many Ukrainians consider Kyiv’s obtaining of a visa-free regime a “victory of the Maidan.” In their understanding, Ukraine “suffered for” the “visa-free regime,” and “sharing” it with Crimeans—people who, at a critical moment for the state, massively supported the annexation of the peninsula to Russia, albeit through a referendum illegitimate from the point of view of international law—seems wrong to many residents of Ukraine.
Activists even placed billboards in Kherson and near the city, half of which are adorned with an inscription in Russian that says, among other things: “Traitors and collaborators! Why have you come? For a Ukrainian passport? Want to go to Europe? What, tours of the Golden Ring no longer interest you?”
Perhaps it was this position that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appealed to at his recent press conference, stating that Ukrainians in Crimea will be able to take advantage of the visa-free regime only when Crimea is returned to Ukraine. “For now, these advantages can be used by temporarily displaced persons after undergoing the appropriate procedure. We must be very responsible with every biometric passport issued by the Ukrainian authorities,” the president said then.
A few days later, Poroshenko proposed issuing old-style foreign passports to Crimeans, which do not grant the right to visa-free entry into the EU. And although the State Migration Service refused to comment on Poroshenko’s statements, the president’s words dismayed the expert community. Some observers called the use of some special procedure for obtaining biometric passports for a separate category of Ukrainian citizens a violation of the obligations Ukraine undertook before the EU. Others wondered what to do with the thousands of biometric passports already obtained by Crimeans under the current rules.
Nevertheless, Dmytro Tymchuk of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security and Defense sees logic in the president’s position. “On the one hand, residents of Crimea should have all the privileges and bonuses that Ukrainian citizens have. But if they have them in full while living in occupied Crimea, then the question arises: why would they even want Crimea to return to Ukraine?” he tells the BBC.
However, there is another point of view. The aforementioned Kherson billboards also contain an inscription in Ukrainian: “Brothers, Ukrainian Crimeans! Even though you are under Russian occupation, we are always glad to see you here. Europe opens its doors to you. Get biometric passports and travel freely through the civilized world. Good luck!”
Another Ukrainian parliament deputy, deputy head of the committee on human rights and also a consultant to the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People (banned in Russia), Heorhiy Lohvynskyi, is convinced that Kyiv should refrain from creating any obstacles to Crimeans obtaining biometric “visa-free” passports. “We must fight not for territories, but for people. We must give them some bonuses so that they feel more Ukrainian on that territory, so that it is interesting and beneficial for them to remain Ukrainians,” he tells the BBC. And the fact that the advantages of the “suffered-for” “visa-free regime” will be used by absolutely pro-Russian-minded Crimeans is, in his words, not a problem. “I am very loyal [to] all people who are there [in Crimea]. Even when a person shouts ‘Crimea is ours!’—this is a product of the strongest propaganda, a product of brainwashing,” Lohvynskyi explains.
Are the hopes of Ukrainian politicians and public figures that the active use of blue biometric passports will increase the loyalty of Crimeans to Ukraine and the current Ukrainian authorities justified?
On the one hand, says Ivan from Simferopol, his acquaintance, who once came to Kyiv for a visa to a Western country, “saw with his own eyes that people are not beaten for speaking Russian on the streets here, which is already a lot.” On the other hand, there is the opinion of Oksana from Sevastopol, who plans to apply for a biometric passport with a blue cover in the near future. “I pursue purely pragmatic goals. I want to go somewhere—and it will be easier for me to use a Ukrainian passport for that, nothing more,” she explains her motivation to the BBC.
One way or another, the State Migration Service says that after Brussels officially announced the start date of the visa-free regime for Ukraine, in Kherson, unlike Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Dnipro, no particular rush for biometric passports is observed. Ivan from Simferopol says that his acquaintances are indeed in no hurry to apply for new-style documents, wanting first to see how the visa-free regime will work.
There are quite a few people in Crimea who do not intend to get a biometric passport, even though they have the opportunity. Among them is 46-year-old civil servant Nikita from Saky, who has a valid old-style Ukrainian passport and a newly obtained passport with a double-headed eagle on the cover. He does not plan to apply for a Ukrainian biometric passport, even after it became known that soon with the new documents one could travel to EU countries without hindrance. "You can't buy me with those gingerbread. Let's just say I'm in no hurry to go there," he says matter-of-factly to the BBC. "I believe that with my Russian passport I can travel to other places where there is something to see," Nikita concludes.
Sviatoslav KHOMENKO.
COMMENTARY FROM "ZAGRANITSA": We wish Nikita from Saky good luck in traveling with a "Crimean" Russian passport – he has a wide choice of routes, from unrecognized Abkhazia to Honduras. We only note that he is not in a hurry to "apply for a Ukrainian biometric passport" not because of his love for the double-headed eagle, but for the simple reason that all traitor civil servants in Crimea have had their Ukrainian passports confiscated by Russian special services.