Russia has distributed 1.5 million passports to residents of its occupied regions of Ukraine, Russian Prime Minister Mykhailo Mishustin said on Tuesday, in order for Moscow to strengthen its control over these territories, reports France-Presse.

Residents of these regions, interviewed earlier in May by AFP, explained that they were under pressure to obtain a Russian passport, which has become necessary for a number of administrative procedures in these territories.

“Since the beginning of October last year, almost 1.5 million people from the new regions have received a Russian passport” and Russian citizenship, Misustin said during a government meeting.

He called on residents of the occupied regions to “feel the real changes that are happening in their towns and villages”, especially in terms of reconstruction, “educational opportunities” and jobs.

In September 2022, Russia announced the annexation of four oblasts of Ukraine (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya, and Kherson), which it partially occupied, following the model of the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Moscow in 2014.

For years, Russia has been issuing Russian passports to residents of eastern Ukraine, controlled by pro-Russian separatists, as well as in Crimea for many years. Moscow did the same in the separatist territories of Georgia or the Republic of Moldova, AFP reminds.

Ukrainian authorities accuse Moscow of using this distribution of passports to justify its self-proclaimed mission to protect Russian-speakers in Ukraine.

The European Union has declared that it does not recognize Russian passports issued in Moscow-occupied regions of Ukraine.

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