Orphans in the occupied territories of Donbas are issued unrecognized "LPR-DPR" passports, as well as those of the Russian Federation.
One of local TV channels, controlled by occupation authorities, aired a story about six students of a Dovzhansk boarding school, who recently, upon reaching the relevant age, obtained Russian passports and also identification documents of the self-styled "Luhansk People's Republic", unrecognized by the international community, RFE/RL reports.
Liudmyla Volynets, an expert on children's rights, a former adoption specialist with the Office of the Presidential Commissioner for Children's Rights, explains: since "passportization" has long begun in these occupied territories, orphans do receive so-called "LPR-DPR" IDs.
So far, however, Ukraine has not developed a procedure for replacing said documents with Ukrainian passports.
As UNIAN reported earlier, Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federations said almost 200,000 residents of the occupied Donbas in 2019 received Russian passports under the expedited naturalization procedure.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry earlier said in a statement that such streamlined passportization of Donbas residents by the Russian side is undisguised interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine as an independent and sovereign state and a serious threat to security throughout the European continent.
