Bill allowing termination of citizenship for people born in Russia introduced to State Duma

A group of MPs has introduced a bill to the Russian State Duma that would allow Russia to deprive people of their citizenship even if they became Russian by birth, as per Duma’s database.

The suggested changes will allow termination of citizenship if an individual has committed a crime or an act that “threatens Russia’s national security”.

What kind of acts threaten national security will be determined by the FSB. The list of crimes that qualify for termination of citizenship is listed in the respective federal law.

However, these circumstances earlier only allowed to deprive people of citizenship in case they obtained it later in their lives.

The MPs behind the initiative are deputies from the occupied Ukrainian territories of Crimea, Sevastopol, and the Luhansk region: Sergey Tsekov, Ekaterina Altabayeva, Sergey Kolbin, and Olga Bas. The explanatory note says the suggested law would “ensure equality in the eyes of the law, and the equality of constitutional status of all Russian regions”.

Should the bill become a law, it is going to affect all legal relationships starting 26 October 2023.

Novaya-Europe has contacted Valeria Vetoshkina, a legal counsel with the Pervy Otdel human rights project, for a comment.

“From a legal perspective, this bill violates the Russian Constitution, which says that a Russian citizen cannot be deprived of their citizenship. The authorities are using a notion of ‘termination of citizenship’ to circumvent this.

The MPs are suggesting that people be deprived of their nationality regardless of them having any other nationality, posing this as equating regular Russian citizens with those who received Russian citizenship following the annexation of Ukraine’s territories.

The global community is making efforts to minimise the number of people without any citizenship, while Russia’s MPs suggest this sort of bill.”