Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Monday that he will submit a draft bill to parliament, or the Verkhovna Rada, allowing people to hold multiple citizenships at the same time.
“Today I am submitting to the Verkhovna Rada a key draft law that will allow the adoption of comprehensive legislative amendments and the introduction of multiple citizenship,” Zelenskyy said in a video address on the occasion of the country's Day of Unity.
Once approved, Zelenskyy said the law would allow all ethnic Ukrainians and their descendants living abroad to obtain citizenship, except those who already have Russian nationality.
The president said foreign volunteers fighting alongside the military against Russian forces in the ongoing war will also be able to obtain Ukrainian citizenship under the proposed law.
“For everyone who can feel that 'being in Ukraine' means 'being at home.' Not as tourists, but as citizens. Citizens of a great, united, single Ukraine,” he added.
Zelenskyy said he signed a decree “on the territories of the Russian Federation historically inhabited by Ukrainians.”
In the decree issued by the Ukrainian presidency on Monday, Zelenskyy asked his Cabinet to "develop and submit an action plan for preserving the national identity of Ukrainians in Russia, including on the lands historically inhabited by them, to the National Security and Defense Council" with the involvement of international experts, representatives of the Ukrainian World Congress, scientists, and the general public.
He included people who lived on land within the borders of Russia's Krasnodar, Belgorod, Bryansk, Voronezh, Kursk, and Rostov regions, claiming that Ukrainians had historically lived there.
The president directed the Foreign Ministry to consider the provisions of the decree when developing a "comprehensive strategy for Ukraine's interaction with the Ukrainian global community."
