He and his parents were among the last in their village to get a Russian passport, but
the pressure was becoming unbearable.
Receiving
the third beating
at the hands of Russian soldiers occupying the Ukrainian region of Kherson, Vyacheslav Ryabkov relented.
The soldiers
broke two of his ribs
, but his face is bruised in the unsmiling passport photo of him, taken in September 2023.
That wasn't enough.
In December, the welder was captured as he returned home from work.
Then one of them hit Ryabkov in the face with the butt of his rifle,
breaking the bridge of his nose.
Russian soldiers broke two of Vyacheslav Ryabkov's ribs so he could obtain Russian citizenship.
Photo: AP
“Why don't you fight for us?
“You already have a Russian passport,” they demanded.
The beating continued until the 42-year-old man
was unconscious.
“Let's get this over with,” one soldier said.
A friend ran in search of Ryabok's mother.
Impossible life without a Russian passport
Russia has successfully imposed its passports
on almost the entire population of occupied Ukraine
, making survival impossible without them and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to obtain citizenship before elections.
Vladimir Putin has secured victory,
an Associated Press investigation
has found .
But accepting a passport means that men living in occupied territories
can be recruited
to fight the same Ukrainian army trying to liberate them.
A Russian passport is needed to
prove ownership of property
and to have access to healthcare and retirement.
Refusal
may result in the loss of parental authority over the children
, the
jail or worse.
A new Russian law stipulates that anyone from the occupied territories who does not have a Russian passport before July 1 can go to jail as a “foreign citizen.”
Vyacheslav Ryabkov shows the wounds a Russian soldier gave him with a knife.
Photo: AP
But Russia also
offers incentives
: a subsidy for leaving the occupied territory and moving to Russia, humanitarian aid, pensions for retirees and money for parents of newborns (with Russian birth certificates).
Every passport and birth certificate issued
makes it harder for Ukraine to recover its
lost lands and children, and every new citizen allows Russia to claim the right – however false – to defend its people from a hostile neighbor.
The AP investigation found that the Russian government
has confiscated at least 1,785 homes and businesses
in the Donetsk and Zaporizhia regions alone.
Ukraine's Crimean leaders in exile reported on February 25 that of 694 soldiers reported killed by Russia in recent fighting, 525 were likely Ukrainian citizens who had received Russian passports since annexation.
AP spoke about the system for imposing Russian citizenship in the occupied territories
with more than a dozen people from the regions
, as well as activists helping them escape and government officials trying to cope with what has become in a bureaucratic and psychological nightmare for many.
Ukrainians displaced by the advance of Russian troops in the east.
Photo: AP
Ukraine's human rights ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said that
"almost 100%
of the population still living in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine" now have Russian passports.
Under international laws dating back to 1907,
it is prohibited to force people to “swear allegiance to a hostile power.”
But when Ukrainians apply for a Russian passport, they must present biometrics and cell phone information and take an oath of allegiance.
"The inhabitants of the occupied territories are the first soldiers fighting against Ukraine," said Kateryna Rashevska, a lawyer who helped Ukraine file a war crimes case against Putin at the International Criminal Court.
"For them, it is logical not to waste Russians,
but only to use Ukrainians
."
Change the law
The combination of force and seduction regarding Russian passports dates back to the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russian citizenship was automatically granted to permanent residents of Crimea and anyone who refused it
lost their right to employment, healthcare and properties.
Nine months after the Russian occupation of the peninsula,
1.5 million Russian passports
had been issued there , according to statistics released by the Russian government in 2015. But Ukrainians say it was still possible to function without a passport for years.
Starting in May 2022, Russia enacted a series of laws to make it easier for Ukrainians to obtain passports, primarily by removing the usual residency and income requirements.
In April 2023 came the punishment: anyone from the occupied territories who did not accept Russian citizenship
would be considered stateless
and would have to register with the Russian Ministry of the Interior.
Russian officials threatened to deny access to medical care to those without a Russian passport, saying it was necessary to have one to prove ownership of property.
The Russian government confiscated hundreds of properties considered “abandoned.”
“You can see it from the passport stamps: if someone got their passport in August 2022 or earlier, they are undoubtedly pro-Russian.
If a passport was issued after that moment, surely the person was forced
,” said Oleksandr Rozum, a lawyer who left the occupied city of Berdiansk and now manages the bureaucratic gray zone for Ukrainians under occupation who ask for his help in registration matters. property, birth, death and divorce certificates.
The situation varies depending on the whims of the Russian officials in charge of a particular area, according to interviews with Ukrainians and a review of Telegram social media accounts created by occupation officials.
In a recently published interview, Yevgeny Balitsky, the Moscow-installed governor of Zaporizhzhia, said that anyone who opposed the occupation was liable to expulsion.
"We understood that these people could not be convinced and that in the future
they would have to be treated more harshly
," he declared.
Balitsky then alluded to making “some extremely tough decisions that I won't talk about.”
Even children are forced to get Russian passports.
What about the boys?
A decree signed on January 4 by Putin
allows the granting of citizenship to
Ukrainian orphans and those “without parental care” to be accelerated, including
children whose parents were detained in the occupied territories
.
According to the Ukrainian government, nearly 20,000 Ukrainian children have gone missing in Russia or Russian-controlled territories, where they can receive passports and be adopted as Russian citizens.
"It's about eradicating identity," said Rashevska, the lawyer involved in the war crimes case.
Natalia Zhyvohliad, a mother of nine from a suburb of Berdiansk, had a clear idea of what awaited her children if she stayed.
Natalia Zhyvohliad, mother of nine children.
Photo: AP
Zhyvohliad said about half of his village of 3,500 left soon after for Ukrainian-controlled lands, some voluntarily and others deported across the front after a 40-kilometer walk.
Others welcomed the occupation: his goddaughter enthusiastically accepted Russian citizenship, as did some of her neighbors.
But she said many were like her:
people waiting for the liberation of Ukraine
.
She kept her youngest children, ages 7 to 18, home from school and did her best to teach them in Ukrainian.
But then
someone ratted her out and she was forced to send them to the Russian school.
At all hours, he said, soldiers would knock on his door and ask him
why he still didn't have a passport
.
A friend
relented because she needed medication
for a chronic illness.
Zhyvohliad resisted throughout the summer, not quite believing the threats of deportation and sending her children to an orphanage in Russia or to dig trenches.
Then last fall, the school principal
forced his 17- and 18-year-old sons to register for the draft
and ordered them to apply for passports in the meantime.
His alternative, the director said, was to explain himself to Russia's internal security services.
By the end of 2023, at least 30,000 Crimean men had been drafted into service in the Russian army since the annexation of the peninsula, according to a UN report.
Zhyvohliad was clear about what his children were risking.
With tears in his eyes and trembling legs, he headed to the passport office.
"I kept the Ukrainian flag during the occupation," he said.
"How could I request that unpleasant thing?"
I expected to use it only once: at the last Russian checkpoint before crossing into Ukrainian-controlled territory.
When Zhyvohliad reached what is known as the filtration point in Novoazovsk, the Russians separated her and her two oldest children from the rest of the children.
They had to sign an agreement to undergo a lie detector test.
Then Zhyvohliad was set aside alone.
For 40 minutes they searched her phone, took her fingerprints, photographs and interrogated her, but finally they let her through.
The children were waiting for her on the other side.
She misses her house but she doesn't regret leaving her.
"I waited until the last minute to be released," she said.
"But the fact that my sons could be recruited was the straw that broke the camel's back."
Use attention as a weapon
Often the life or death decision is more immediate.
Russian occupation officials have said that the day will soon come when only those with Russian passports and the all-important national health insurance will be able to access medical care.
For some, that has already arrived.
The international organization Physicians for Human Rights documented at least
15 cases of people being denied life-saving medical care
in occupied territories between February 2023 and August 2023 because they lacked a Russian passport.
Some hospitals even had a passport counter to speed up the process for desperate patients.
In Zaporizhzhia province,
a hospital was ordered to close
because medical staff refused to accept Russian citizenship.
Alexander Dudka, Russian-appointed head of the village of Lazurne in the Kherson region, was the first to threaten to deny humanitarian aid to residents without Russian citizenship.
In August he added medicines to the list of things to which those awaiting the liberation of Ukraine would no longer have access.
The residents, it said in the video broadcast on the town's Telegram channel, "must respect the country that guarantees their security and that now helps them live."
Starting January 1, anyone needing medical care in the occupied region must prove that they have
mandatory national health insurance,
which is only available to Russian citizens.
Last year, “if you weren't afraid or coerced, there were places where you could still get medical care,” said Uliana Poltavets, a PHR researcher.
"Now it's impossible."
Dina Urich, who organizes escapes from occupied territory with the aid group Helping to Leave, said about 400 requests come in each month, but they only have the money and personnel for 40 evacuations.
The priority is for those who need urgent medical attention, she explained.
And Russian soldiers at the latest checkpoints have begun turning away people without a Russian passport.
"There are constantly people dying while waiting for evacuation due to lack of medical care," he said.
“People will stay there, people will die, people will experience psychological and physical pressure, that is, some will simply die from torture and persecution, while others will live in constant fear.”
Importing loyalty
In addition to turning Ukrainians into Russians in all occupied territories,
the Russian government brings in its own people.
It offers
rock-bottom mortgage rates
to anyone from Russia who wants to move there to replace the Ukrainian doctors, nurses, teachers, police officers and municipal workers who are no longer there.
Half of the village of Zhyvohliad is gone, either at the beginning of the war, when prospects looked bleak for the Kherson region, or after being deported to the other side of the front line by occupation officials.
The empty house of the school principal was occupied by a replacement appointed by the Russians.
Artillery and airstrikes damaged thousands of homes in the port city of Mariupol, which was besieged by Russian forces for months before falling under their control.
Most of the inhabitants fled to territory controlled by Ukraine or into the interior of Russia
.
The Russians often seize property.
Russia also offered “residence certificates” and a subsidy of 100,000 rubles ($1,000) to Ukrainians who wish to accept citizenship and live in Russia.
To many people tired of hearing the daily sounds of battle and fearful of what the future might hold, it seemed like a good option.
This is similar to what Russia did after the annexation of Crimea: by populating occupied regions with Russian residents, Russia increasingly consolidates its control over territories it has taken by force in what many Ukrainians describe as ethnic cleansing.
The process continues to accelerate.
After capturing the town of Advivka last month, Russia launched into handing out passports within days.
The neighboring town of Oleshky in Kherson was practically empty after flooding caused by the explosion of the Kakhovka dam.
The housing subsidy in Russia looks fabulous compared to the bombings and rising water levels, said Rima Yaremenko.
She did not accept it but crossed Russia to Latvia and then to Poland.
But she believes the Russians took the opportunity to expel those who remained in Oleshky.
"Maybe they wanted to empty the city," he said.
“They occupied it, maybe they thought it would be theirs forever.”
Ryabkov said he was offered housing allowance when he completed the paperwork to obtain a passport, but he turned it down.
However, he knows many people who accepted him.
When Russian soldiers caught Ryabkov on the street in December, everyone in his village had left or had Russian citizenship.
When his mother arrived,
he was barely recognizable under the blood
and Russian rifles pointed at him.
She threw herself on his body.
“Shoot through me
,” he challenged them.
They didn't dare shoot an old woman and she finally dragged him home.
Preparations began to leave the next day.
It took them time, but they managed it
using Russian passports.
“When I saw our yellow and blue flag,
I started crying
,” he said.
"I wanted to burn the Russian passport, destroy it, trample it."
Translation: Elisa Carnelli