Ukrainians living in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine are being forced to assume Russian citizenship or face harsh retaliation, including possible deportation to Russia, U.S.-backed research published on August 2 said.
Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine
RFE/RL's Ukraine Live Briefing gives you the latest developments on Russia's invasion, Western military aid, the plight of civilians, and territorial control maps. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war, click here.
The research says residents of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya regions are being targeted by a systematic effort to strip them of Ukrainian identity.
“The report details a disturbing campaign to compel residents to adopt Russian citizenship,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said. “Those who refuse to do so face limited access to public services, employment, and property ownership with implications for their mobility, health, and livelihoods.”
Parents of children born in occupied parts of Ukraine who refuse to register their children for Russian citizenship face even greater difficulties, including reduced access to parental benefits, he said.
“Some parents have been threatened with losing custody of their children and possible deportation to Russia,” Miller said.
The tactic, which Miller said Russia has used before in Georgia, also provides pretext to further advance the Kremlin’s “imperial ambitions.”
Miller said Ukrainians living under Russian occupation “are and will remain" Ukrainian citizens.
“State-sanctioned intimidation will not change the facts. Every inch of Ukraine’s territory is and will remain Ukraine,” Miller said.
The report was released by the Conflict Observatory program at Yale University's School of Public Health's Humanitarian Research Lab.
The researchers said they identified laws and tactics used to make it impossible for residents to survive in their homes unless they accept Russian citizenship.
"These laws and tactics violate international law, including the prohibition on discrimination against people living under occupation based on nationality, and forcing people to declare allegiance to an occupying power, both illegal under The Hague Convention and the Geneva Conventions," the report said.
WATCH: Children are not only being taken from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia, but also to Belarus. The country's strongman leader, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, has claimed "they don't want to leave." But exiled Belarusian opposition politicians and the Ukrainian authorities say the children have been abducted.
Your browser doesn’t support HTML5
'Organized Crime': Ukrainian Children Taken To Belarus
A series of decrees signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin compel Ukrainians to get Russian passports in a process the researchers call forced passportization.
Ukrainians in occupied territory who do not seek Russian citizenship "are subjected to threats, intimidation, restrictions on humanitarian aid, and basic necessities, and possible detention or deportation -- all designed to force them to become Russian citizens," the report said.
Ukrainians in areas under Russian control have no choice but to accept a Russian passport if they want to survive, Humanitarian Research Lab Executive Director Nathaniel Raymond told Reuters.
"It is very widespread and very ongoing," Raymond said.
The Kremlin has consistently denied allegations of war crimes in Ukraine in what it calls a "special military operation" launched, it falsely claims, to "de-Nazify" its neighbor and protect Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, a Russian children's rights official, have been accused by the UN's International Criminal Court (ICC) of the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. The ICC in March issued arrest warrants for Putin and Lvova-Belova, saying their actions amount to a war crime under international legislation.
Russia said at the time that the warrants were "outrageous" and legally void.
The Ukrainian government says it has identified almost 19,500 children who have been deported or separated from their parents or guardians since the start of Russia's unprovoked invasion in February last year.
With reporting by Reuters