A new investigation by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), an international journalists’ organization, has added new details about how Russia forces Ukrainian residents of occupied territories to have Russian identity documents, consistent with its attempts at forced assimilation of Ukrainian culture. This practice is also known as “passportization” and has been practiced in the occupied territories for some time, even before the start of the current war in some areas of Donbass.
According to the EBU investigation, which lasted months and was based on a series of interviews with Ukrainian people living under Russian occupation, the Russian occupiers forced residents of the occupied territories to accept Russian passports and denied them access to treatment, health services and Food, subsidies, pensions and freedom of movement within the territory in the event of rejection. These practices would also have affected people who were sick and had conditions requiring ongoing treatment, such as diabetes, or people who turned to local hospitals for treatment and were denied access because they did not have Russian identification documents.
– Also read: The “Russification” of the occupied Ukrainian cities
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