Passportization, Diminished Citizenship Rights, and the Donbas Vote in Russia's 2021 Duma Elections

Abstract

Referring in this paper to the extraterritorial naturalization of Donbas residents en masse, passportization is one of Russia’s preeminent foreign policy tools to deepen the potentially explosive deadlock in the implementation of the Minsk Agreements. In this deadlock, passportization can serve as a tool of ambiguous Russian extraterritorial governance over the Donbas while keeping violence at a comparatively low level, or as a tool to justify a full-scale Russian military intervention to "protect" its citizens from, for example, a purported "genocide." Russia does not necessarily want more citizens or territories: Russia’s ultimate goals are far-ranging security guarantees to prevent Ukraine’s further integration or membership with NATO. Passportization is one of the instruments to achieve this overarching goal. Passportization of residents of the non-government-controlled areas of the Donbas does not endow these Ukrainians with full membership of the Russian state; they are "second-class citizens" with diminished rights. This becomes especially apparent with regard to not only international non-recognition, but also pensions, social benefits, and voting rights. Due to this "diminished citizenship," Russia suffers from a legitimacy deficit in the self-proclaimed "People's Republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk - the "DPR" and "LPR." Enforcing voting rights for Donbas residents in the 2021 Duma elections therefore served the purpose of legitimizing Russia in the residents’ eyes: It suggested that integration with Russia is continuously advancing. In the 2021 Russian Duma (parliamentary) elections, the turnout among eligible passportized Donbas residents was above 40 percent. Of the roughly 200,000 voters, three quarters voted electronically at de facto polling stations (so-called "information centers") on the territory of the "DPR" and "LPR"; one quarter travelled to polling stations in the neighboring Rostov region in Russia. With the whole adult population of the "DPR" and "LPR" as a reference point, less than 10 percent of Donbas residents took part in the Duma elections. Donbas voters are pro-Russian: They have much more favorable views toward United Russia than Russians in the Rostov region. On average, the presence of Donbas residents at respective Rostov polling stations, and at the seven Rostov electoral districts, adds 25 percent to the United Russia result. This is paradoxical, as United Russia follows the official Russian reading of the Minsk Agreements - reintegration of the Donbas with Ukraine on Russian terms - while Donbas residents voted for integration with Russia. But the official results give a distorted picture of support for United Russia, as workplace mobilization and electoral manipulations were widely reported. Ukraine's policy to counteract passportization and the involvement of Ukrainian citizens in Russian elections has a legal foundation: Ukraine does not allow dual citizenship. The fast-track passports are not recognized, and passportized Donbas residents are still considered Ukrainian - and not Russian - citizens. Russian elections with the involvement of Donbas residents are declared illegal and the Russian parliament illegitimate. But beyond this legal foundation, Ukraine lacks a coherent, long-term strategy on how to reintegrate Ukrainians in the "DPR" and "LPR." The reaction of the United States and the EU to Russia's passportization has been weak; a mere non-recognition of these passports is not sufficient. Instead, the West should acknowledge that passportization and the development of Russian electoral infrastructure in the Donbas fundamentally erodes the political part of the Minsk Agreements by undermining the possibility of having free and fair local elections according to OSCE standards. The U.S. and the EU should reinvigorate their support of Ukrainian sovereignty without pushing Ukraine deeper into the "sequency trap" with political concessions. Ukraine urgently needs a coherent long-term policy toward its citizens in the non-government-controlled territories. Policy suggestions from various actors range from hawkish (stripping Donbas residents with Russian passports of Ukrainian citizenship) to conciliatory (de facto recognition of some documents issued by the "DPR" and "LPR"). This hodgepodge of proposed policy responses unmistakably sends the wrong signals to Donbas residents. Instead, Ukraine should deepen its engagement with Donbas residents by making public services more accessible, including by a speedy digital transformation of state services. Better Ukrainian public services would be a powerful tool to counteract Russia’s creeping passportization of the Donbas.