issuance of Russian passports in the first half of the year increased by 46% – Kommersant

In the first half of 2023, more than 5 million internal passports were issued in Russia, which is 46% more than the same period last year. This figure has become a record since the introduction of such statistics in 2016. This is reported RTVI with reference to the migration statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

From January to June this year, 5.03 million people received a Russian passport, in 2022 for the same period – 3.45 million people.

The reasons for this growth are not so much related to demography, but to the issuance of passports to residents of the DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, demographer Alexei Raksha commented on RTVI.

“The issuance of internal passports, in theory, should be related to the number of citizens crossing age limits, but an increase of almost 1.5 times refutes this hypothesis. Such growth is only possible for non-demographic reasons,” Mr. Raksha explained.

The number of foreign citizens who received Russian citizenship in 2021 amounted to 735,385 people, in 2020 – 656,347, reported TASS with reference to the statistics of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In January-December 2022, the decision to acquire Russian citizenship was made in relation to 691,045 citizens, cited statistics from the Ministry of Internal Affairs Interfax.

In April 2019, Russia simplified the procedure for granting citizenship to residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, May 2022 — Zaporozhye and Kherson regions of Ukraine. September 30, 2022 President Vladimir Putin signed treaties on the inclusion of these four territories into Russia.

As Kommersant previously reported, in the first quarter of 2023, there were also changes in terms of the interest of residents of the post-Soviet countries in obtaining Russian citizenship. Natives of Belarus, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Georgia have become noticeably less likely to apply for a Russian passport. But among the “new Russians” there are more immigrants from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan.

Read more about changes in the structure of migration in the publication “Kommersant” “Ukrainians and Belarusians have been replaced by Tajiks”.

Maria Fedotova