Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers has been instructed to draft a bill on dual citizenship.
Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) Oleksiy Danilov announced this at a briefing after an NSDC meeting on February 26, according to an UNIAN correspondent.
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According to him, the bill should be drawn up within the next two months.
The issue of dual citizenship was on the agenda of the NSDC meeting, Danilov said.
"It is very important for our state. You know that we are moving towards civilized countries that allow dual citizenship. But for our country there are certain challenges associated with the fact that at one time, unfortunately, Russia used this tool – when our chief of the SBU [Security Service of Ukraine], the interior minister, the defense minister, the head of the General Staff were citizens of the Russian Federation. We cannot let it happen again," he stressed.
Danilov says similar challenges exist in other countries as well. Therefore, he said, the NSDC on February 26 decided that the government should propose a bill within two months that "will allow us to clearly understand persons with dual citizenship."
He also mentioned forced passportization by Russia in occupied territories of Ukraine.
According to him, those people who today are forcibly given citizenship in the occupied territories – Crimea and part of Donbas, they, "relatively speaking, receive those Ausweises [an allusion to ID documents issued by Nazi Germany's authorities to local residents during the German occupation of Ukraine in 1941-1944] that enable them to somehow live in that territory."
The NSDC secretary predicts that when the territory is liberated, people will get rid of "the papers that are being provided to them there today."
Answering a question from journalists what this bill should stipulate, Danilov explained that officials, lawmakers and those citizens who work in government agencies should not have dual citizenship.
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