Victims of presidential decrees with multiple passports ran en masse to the courts
After the start of full-scale Russian aggression, President Vladimir Zelensky began to systematically deprive Ukrainian citizenship of odious individuals. This happened in waves; presidential decrees contained several names at once. There was only one technical basis for such radical decisions - the fact that such persons had citizenship of other countries. Although in January of this year the president registered in the Verkhovna Rada a bill “On some issues in the field of migration regarding the grounds and procedure for acquiring and terminating citizenship of Ukraine,” which provides for multiple citizenship. True, in any case, citizens of the aggressor country remain “outside the game,” and they now dominate the list of those whose Ukrainian passports have been revoked.
The life path and relationships with the authorities of those whose passport with the trident was taken away are different: it is hardly possible to compare the “guilt” of Igor Kolomoisky, Viktor Medvedchuk, top officials of the Yanukovych era and a gang of smugglers. Some of these individuals did not agree with the loss of their Ukrainian passport and are trying to get it back through the courts. Among them are those ex-citizens who fled Ukraine long ago, and those who still have a vague status in it.
Zelensky didn’t start it
The termination of Ukrainian citizenship of famous people began during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko. In April 2017, he issued a corresponding decree regarding the ex-people's deputy from the Radical Party of Lyashko, Andrei Artemenko. This happened shortly after The New York Times published an article that a Ukrainian lawmaker had handed over to the administration of then US President Donald Trump a plan for resolving the conflict in Donbass, which included the withdrawal of Russian troops from Donbass, the lifting of sanctions on Russia and the holding of a referendum on the transfer of Crimea for rent to Russia.
In Ukraine, such an act, to put it mildly, was not supported, in particular, by Artemenko’s fellow deputies, and the Prosecutor General’s Office began an investigation on grounds of treason. Artemenko was quickly found to have a Canadian passport, the existence of which he himself reported during interrogation. True, the deputy noted that he annulled it as soon as he was elected to parliament, but Canadian citizenship continued to be valid. This became the basis for Petro Poroshenko to issue a decree terminating the Ukrainian citizenship of Artemenko and five other people, including former Deputy Minister of Economy Sasha Borovik.
This step immediately caused criticism among human rights activists: they referred to Article 25 of the Constitution, which clearly defines that a citizen of Ukraine cannot be deprived of citizenship and the right to change citizenship. On the other hand, the law on citizenship calls the acquisition of citizenship of another country the basis for its loss. The Constitutional Court should have interpreted this conflict, but its position, as on other important issues, simply does not exist. Therefore, Poroshenko’s lawyers then resolved this discrepancy at their own discretion. The emphasis was placed on the fact that the presidential decree was not about deprivation, which is prohibited by the Constitution, but only about the termination of citizenship (which, hypothetically, can someday be restored). According to the same scheme, Mikheil Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship was subsequently terminated. He was accused of hiding information about his criminal convictions in Georgia when receiving a Ukrainian passport.
Interestingly, one of the first decrees of the newly elected President Vladimir Zelensky restored Saakashvili’s citizenship. He also granted Ukrainian citizenship to Russian oppositionist Alexander Nevzorov and a number of individuals who took part in the defense of the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine.
Moreover, Zelensky assured that from now on there will be no artificial inhibition or delay of this process on his part, as during the time of his predecessor. And he stated that he was generally ready to grant citizenship to “all Ukrainians on the planet.”
But at the same time, after the start of a large-scale invasion, Zelensky, guided by wartime logic, began not only to issue citizenship, but also to take it away. Moreover, the Ukrainian passport was canceled mainly not to those to whom it was presented, but to persons who lived in Ukraine since its independence. The “first signs” flew back in April 2021: the head of state revoked the citizenship of businessmen Vadim Alperin, Araik Amirkhanyan and Alexander Yerimichuk. This happened after a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council, where personal sanctions were introduced against individuals leading the so-called top ten Ukrainian smugglers. Zelensky personally called Alperin “the godfather of smuggling in Ukraine.” The formal basis for Alperin’s loss of Ukrainian citizenship was parallel Israeli citizenship, Amirkhanyan’s loss of Armenian citizenship, and Yerimichuk’s loss of Romanian citizenship.
The issue of loss of citizenship is decided by the Commission under the President of Ukraine on Citizenship Issues. State and law enforcement agencies that have discovered grounds for loss of citizenship (for example, the presence of a valid passport of a foreign country) can make a submission to this commission.
Following the meeting, the commission decides to submit a proposal to the president to approve the request for loss of Ukrainian citizenship. The Chairman of the Commission sends this proposal to the President along with the draft decree. The presidential decree can only be appealed to the Supreme Court.
After the start of the big war in July 2022, Zelensky issued a decree that terminated the citizenship of a number of significant people: among them were the former head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional administration Igor Kolomoisky and his ex-deputy Gennady Korban. Both were pillars of the so-called “Dnepropetrovsk clan,” and Kolomoisky was also a business partner of Zelensky during the “95th quarter.” Now Kolomoisky is in the SBU pre-trial detention center on charges of financial fraud in Privatbank before its nationalization. The FBI also has questions for the oligarch. The basis for the deprivation of citizenship of Kolomoisky and Korban were Israeli passports, the existence of which they did not even hide.
Along with Korban and Kolomoisky, two people’s deputies appeared on the list of those deprived of their passports: Vadim Rabinovich from the banned pro-Kremlin Opposition for Life and Igor Vasilkovsky from Servant of the People. Rabinovich predictably found Israeli citizenship, where the once ardent “dove of peace” fled before the invasion, and the story with one of the biggest truants, Vasilkovsky, and his Bulgarian passport, was not well understood even by his former comrades from the mono-majority.
Decrees on loss of citizenship are not published publicly due to the presence of personal information, and this further adds secrecy to the process. For example, the decree “named after Kolomoisky-Korban” was first published... on Facebook by the people’s deputy from “Batkivshchyna” Sergei Vlasenko.
A couple of months later, in September 2022, the president revoked the citizenship of four more smugglers from the above-mentioned NSDC list who had Russian and Romanian documents. And in December of the same year, a similar procedure was applied to 13 ministers of the UOC-MP, among them the Metropolitan of Tulchin and Bratslav, who is suspected of treason and who has a Russian passport.
In January 2023, Zelensky took on the “big fish” and overt Kremlin agents. He himself said that he had deprived the citizenship of several people’s deputies from the OPZZH - Putin’s godfather Viktor Medvedchuk, his closest ally Taras Kozak and ex-Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin. To this “Medvedchukov’s” company was also added the long-lived Verkhovna Rada of seven convocations, non-factional Andrei Derkach, who, according to the SBU, was long ago recruited by the Russian special services to directly participate in Russia’s seizure of Ukraine. This entire quartet was accused of treason. “If people’s representatives choose to serve not the people of Ukraine, but the murderers who came to Ukraine, then our actions will be appropriate. And these are not the last such decisions,” Zelensky promised, wishing those who have Russian citizenship to live in their beloved country.
On February 4, 2023, Zelensky said in his video message that he signed the relevant documents “to protect and cleanse our state from those who are on the side of the aggressor.” The President said that he was guided by the idea of the Security Service that certain individuals had Russian citizenship. The president did not announce the names, but, according to sources in law enforcement agencies, the latest citizens from whom Ukrainian citizenship was taken away were representatives of the notorious Yanukovych team: ex-Minister of Education Dmitry Tabachnik, ex-Minister of Internal Affairs Vitaly Zakharchenko, former head of the Presidential Administration Andrey Klyuev, ex-head of the SBU Alexander Yakimenko and ex-Minister of Revenue and Duties Alexander Klimenko.
Of course, not all of those whom the head of state has already deprived of citizenship are so willing to return it. Many have long given up on Ukraine and settled in new lands. But there are also many who, even from abroad, are suing the president for the right to restore their Ukrainian passport.
Red tape for a passport
Declared by the president as the “chief smuggler,” Vadim Alperin appealed the presidential decree regarding the loss of his citizenship back in 2021. But unsuccessfully. The administrative court of cassation as part of the Supreme Court came to the conclusion: the contested decree was issued on the basis, within the powers and in the manner provided for by the Constitution and laws of Ukraine. The court also took into account the decision of the ECHR in the case “Ramadan v. Malta”, which states that the termination by the state of a person’s citizenship on grounds determined by law, as a result of the acquisition of citizenship of another state in this case is not a violation of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
However, Alperin’s failure did not stop other dissenting “Ukrainian patriots.” Viktor Medvedchuk, who was waiting for Russian troops in Ukraine, left it in September 2022, when he, as a very valuable Putin cadre, was exchanged for 200 captured Ukrainian defenders. After being deprived of citizenship, Medvedchuk a month later appealed to the Supreme Court to recognize the provisions of the presidential decree as groundless. According to the plaintiff’s representatives, the presidential decree is “illegal, groundless, arbitrary, adopted in violation of the norms of the Constitution of Ukraine, the Law of Ukraine “On Citizenship of Ukraine” and grossly violates the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of the plaintiff. On February 23, 2023, the court opened proceedings in this case, and on October 17, 2023, the SBU filed an application to close the proceedings.
The security service argued that the real purpose of Medvedchuk’s lawsuit was not to return him to citizenship of Ukraine, which he called “Anti-Russia,” but “to express his protest against the existing democratic political regime in Ukraine and create the preconditions for resolving other legal issues.” In January of this year, the court rejected the SBU's request to close the proceedings.
In addition to citizenship, through the Supreme Court, Medvedchuk is trying to regain his parliamentary mandate and at the same time get rid of the economic sanctions imposed by the National Security and Defense Council back in 2021. Medvedchuk’s defense filed a claim for the return of his deputy mandate in February 2023, but now it is on pause until a decision in the citizenship case is made.
Medvedchuk’s colleague in the “passport” misfortune, Andrei Derkach, also demands that the presidential decree be invalidated and cancelled. At this stage, the court, at the request of the plaintiff, allowed third parties to participate in the case who do not make independent claims regarding the subject of the dispute - the State Migration Service, the Commission under the President of Ukraine on Citizenship, and the Security Service.
Among the “birds of Yanukovych,” Andrei Klyuev is suing for the return of citizenship; he filed a corresponding lawsuit with the Supreme Court in August 2023. Klyuev, through his lawyer, argued: the presidential decree must be canceled, since Article 7 of the European Convention on Nationality and Article 8 of the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness have been violated. The plaintiff also swore that he had not applied to the Russian authorities with an application for citizenship, and supported his words with a response letter from the Migration Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation to a request from a Russian lawyer. Klyuev asked the court not to take into account screenshots and excerpts from the Russian websites “Egrn-Document” and AS “Russian Passport”, provided by the SBU as evidence of his receipt of a Russian citizen’s passport. They say this information is dubious. However, on February 5 of this year, the Supreme Court completely rejected Klyuev’s appeal of the presidential decree. The decision has not yet entered into force because the plaintiff has time to appeal.
Together with politicians, Metropolitan Meletiy of Chernivtsi and Bukovina (Egorenko Valentin Vladimirovich), who was on the list of 13 ministers of the UOC-MP with Russian passports, is complaining about presidential injustice. At the last meeting in December last year, the court allowed the defendant, the representative of the president, to involve the Security Service in the case as a third party who does not make independent claims regarding the subject of the dispute.
A separate story is the epic with the dismissal and reinstatement of the scandalous Supreme Court judge Bogdan Lvov. In September 2022, journalists from the “Schemes” program discovered that Bogdan Lvov has Russian citizenship. Later the SBU confirmed this fact. There was no question of depriving Lvov of his Ukrainian citizenship, but after that the process of his dismissal was launched. At the same time, Lvov denies everything: he assures that the SBU neither confirmed nor denied the information about his having a Russian passport. On January 10, 2024, the Kiev District Administrative Court reinstated Bogdan Lvov as a judge of the Supreme Court and decided to pay him wages “during his forced absence.” This decision did not enter into force, and the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal on February 12 opened proceedings on a complaint from the Supreme Court, which did not agree with the decision to reinstate Bogdan Lvov as a judge.
The once “fierce comrades” Gennady Korban and Igor Kolomoisky, relations between whom have long cooled significantly, are also suing the state - each separately. Korban filed the lawsuit in the Supreme Court in November last year. According to the plaintiff, Zelensky’s decree contradicts the provisions of Article 25 of the Constitution, which prohibits the deprivation of a citizen. Korban’s side argues that the application of Article 19 of the Law of Ukraine “On Citizenship of Ukraine” (regarding the fact that the voluntary acquisition by a citizen of Ukraine of the citizenship of another state is the basis for the loss of citizenship) “is only an attempt to circumvent the constitutional prohibition of deprivation of citizenship by substituting concepts ... the lack of will of the plaintiff to stop Ukrainian citizenship and the termination of the plaintiff’s citizenship through the allegedly legally prescribed loss procedure is the actual deprivation of the plaintiff’s citizenship of Ukraine, which is contrary to the Constitution of Ukraine.” At the same time, the plaintiff notes that the provisions of the Constitution and the law on citizenship do not contain a ban on having multiple citizenship. The court granted Korban's request to request from the Office of the President a copy of the relevant decree and a number of documents, including a copy of the SBU letter dated July 1, 2022 regarding Korban's voluntary acquisition of Israeli citizenship.
But the most public is the trial of the loss of citizenship by Igor Kolomoisky. This litigation continues in parallel with another high-profile process: the Dnieper oligarch was handed three suspicions that relate to illegal schemes for withdrawing funds from Privatbank. Kolomoisky has been kept in a pre-trial detention center for six months, and the court hearings are widely covered by the media that are part of the accused’s media empire. Kolomoisky has never hidden the fact that in addition to Ukrainian citizenship, he also has Israeli and Cypriot citizenship. Moreover, he boasted about this, claiming that the Ukrainian Constitution prohibits having dual, not triple, citizenship.
However, now the oligarch’s lawyers are not guided by such mocking arguments. They indicate that their client’s rights were violated, in particular, by the secret procedure for issuing presidential decrees, and the consideration of the case is deliberately delayed by the defendant.
In November 2023, Kolomoisky filed a claim with the Cassation Administrative Court as part of the Supreme Court to cancel the decree regarding the loss of his citizenship. The claim was first considered at the stage of acceptance of proceedings by the Supreme Court and it was decided to remain. Subsequently, Kolomoisky’s side submitted an application with the shortcomings corrected - data and information about the time frame when he learned about the existence of the presidential decree were added. Lawyers emphasize that no one sent this decree to their client, did not properly inform them in accordance with the procedure prescribed by law, and in fact Kolomoisky heard about the loss of his citizenship in the media.
“Kolomoisky learned about this decree directly on September 15, 2023, when he was handed a petition to change the preventive measure in criminal proceedings,” says lawyer Kristina Yamelskaya, who is involved in the case of the billionaire’s citizenship, “Since we have a period of six months to appeal the decisions of the authorities , then within this period he filed a statement of claim, since he categorically disagreed with the existence of such a decree in principle. To find out the reasons for the loss of citizenship, clarifying requests from lawyers were sent. We were told that the legal basis is clause 1 of part 1 of Article 19 of the Law “On Citizenship of Ukraine”, which provides that given the voluntary acquisition by a citizen of the citizenship of another country, and in this case it is the citizenship of the state of Israel, he loses Ukrainian citizenship. There was no expression of will in relation to this very Mr. Kolomoisky, who lives here, has a large business, owns movable and immovable property, supports charitable and public projects and has other fairly stable ties with Ukraine. Of course, the loss of citizenship affects his legal status - for example, the right to vote and be elected in elections. That is, this is a significant narrowing and restriction of political and civil rights.”
The main basis on which the protection is built is that the law does not have retroactive effect. Kolomoisky received Israeli citizenship using his Jewish heritage in 1995. And the Constitution of Ukraine in this edition (which provides for a single citizenship) came into force only in 1996. In addition, according to lawyers, the legislation does not directly prohibit dual or multiple citizenship: it only enshrines the principle of single citizenship, but there is no established liability for its violation.
The president's representatives, having received Kolomoisky's claims, provided the court with a response to the statement of claim and a motion to leave the statement of claim without consideration. They point out that Kolomoisky missed the six-month deadline to appeal the decree, but the defense insists that their ward was not properly familiarized with the decree, although it was circulating on the Internet.
“With regard to presidential decrees, there is a procedure prescribed by law for the promulgation of normative legal acts and their entry into force,” says Yamelskaya. “As for the direct deprivation of Ukrainian citizenship, the person must be notified by letter and the decree itself must be attached to the letter. He must sign for receipt, then his passport must be confiscated and a certificate of lost citizenship must be issued. However, until now the passport of a citizen of Ukraine has not been confiscated from Igor Valerievich and he uses it. In addition, in other courts where criminal proceedings against Mr. Kolomoisky are being considered, investigative judges regularly call him a citizen of Ukraine. This is reflected in the relevant decisions in criminal proceedings.
They (the president’s side – “Commander in Chief”) want to prevent this lawsuit from being considered at all. They cannot even provide evidence that they even sent this decree to Kolomoisky. According to the law, there must be a check, a receipt with the address, date, time, type of operation, and its cost. However, for several meetings we have been told that they will provide this evidence at the next meeting and therefore we have breaks of a month or two. And at the next meeting, no one again brings any evidence, no receipts, and they cannot prove the fact that the decree was actually sent.”
There is another interesting detail that Kolomoisky’s lawyers are trying to use in his favor: from March 2014 to March 2015, he was the chairman of the Dnepropetrovsk State Administration. But according to the law “On Local State Administrations,” such a position could only be held by a citizen of Ukraine, although Kolomoisky already had Israeli citizenship at that time, acquired in 1995. However, in 2014, unlike today, this fact did not bother anyone.
The strange thing about the stories about the termination of citizenship is that against the backdrop of such measures against some openly pro-Russian ex-deputies, we do not hear about similar steps against others - like Gauleiters Vladimir Saldo and Yevgeny Balitsky, who have already been convicted in Ukraine for a whole bunch of crimes. They not only do not hide their Russian passports, but are also engaged in their forced distribution in the occupied territories. But now the pace of depriving unreliable citizens of passports has slowed down somewhat. Or Bankovaya simply does not report new decrees.
