While many Ukrainians have sought a life outside the country, there are plenty of foreigners who would like to come here. But getting Ukrainian citizenship is not so simple.
Without multiple legal justifications, one can endlessly try to obtain citizenship and still be refused, even after living in Ukraine for 20 years.
“Everyone has forever complained about bureaucracy when getting Ukrainian citizenship,” said Vasyl Cherednichenko, an immigration expert and partner at the ExpatPro law firm.
“In the state migration services they often refuse to accept documents using legal difficulties… not explaining how to fix it. They only say ‘go and read the law,’” he said.
So when President Volodymyr Zelensky stated during his inauguration speech on May 20 that he welcomes those who are ready to build a strong and successful Ukraine and will help them to obtain Ukrainian citizenship, few expected that it would happen so fast.
It took only eight days after the inauguration for Zelensky to sign his first order on issuing Ukrainian citizenship to five important foreigners in the country. Some of them had been waiting for this decision for years.
With the same order, Zelensky also restored the Ukrainian citizenship to ex-Georgian President and former Odesa Oblast Governor Mikheil Saakashvili, which he received from former President Petro Poroshenko in 2015 and lost two years later due to a political confrontation.
“Zelensky called me at 7 a. m., woke me up and said ‘I will restore your citizenship at 2 p. m.’ And he restored it exactly to the minute. I’m not used to this in Ukraine, that is cool,” Saakashvili said at the time.
During the summer, the government made a few more moves toward its stated goal. In early June, parliament simplified the procedure for granting Ukrainian citizenship to foreigners who helped to defend the country’s territorial integrity.
In August, Zelensky simplified the acquisition of citizenship for those who fought for Ukraine during the war and for Russians who are regarded as friends to Ukraine or who have been persecuted for political reasons.
Throughout the first half of 2019, Ukraine granted citizenship to 656 people — 80 percent were granted it from April to July, according to the State Migration Service.
In 2018, for the whole year the number was 983.
“There are visible dynamics for the second quarter of this year,” said Cherednichenko.
The Kyiv Post interviewed four new Ukrainians who are widely seen as having gone above and beyond the call of duty for the country or having contributed significant value to Ukraine, as was stipulated in the president’s order.
Medical volunteer
Born in the Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, Dmytro Fomin, 47, a volunteer at the All-Ukrainian Council for Reanimation and Emergency First Aid, received Ukrainian citizenship by presidential decree on July 18, after three years of waiting.
Fomin met with the Kyiv Post in the capital’s main military hospital, where in 2015 he was among those who were keen to fill the huge gaps in Ukraine’s military medicine capacity. As an educational program coordinator, he helped to organize two to five days of intensive training courses on Emergency First Aid called MedSanBat, where military doctors were trained and equipped according to NATO standards.
“These walls saw a lot,” said Fomin, recalling how strong resistance was in the very beginning from the management of the hospital.
In total, during the program between 2014 and 2016 around 5,000 of Ukraine’s military personnel and nearly 500 military doctors were trained by NATO experts. In addition, the Ukrainian army received medical equipment worth some $850,000.
The team of around 20 people, including Fomin himself, also organized courses in the eastern Donbas region not far from the front line to give training in lifesaving medical procedures.
Once during the training there, an elderly man crouched down and started to cry, saying if he had known these things, he would have been able to save his friend, a moment forever etched in
Fomin’s memory.
Fomin, who spoke to the Kyiv Post in Ukrainian and not his native Russian, decided to move to Ukraine a long time ago, right after the Ukraine’s 2004 Orange Revolution.
By that time, he already knew he did not want to live in Russia after a series of horrifying tragedies, including the Kursk submarine disaster in 2000 and the Nord-Ost terrorist attack in Moscow two years later. The final straw for Fomin was the terrorist attack against a school in Beslan, North Ossetia in 2004, where 314 people died, including 186 kids, as the result of a Russian military counterattack.
“I realized that my life was worth nothing. I was looking for a place to move, I liked it here and I decided that Ukraine is the place for me to live,” he said.
When the war with Russia started in the east of Ukraine, Fomin realized that he wanted to help somehow, but he didn’t want to become a soldier.
“On the one hand, I understood that I wanted to help the Ukrainian army. On the other hand, I wasn’t ready to kill people,” said Fomin.
Thus, he volunteered for the MedSanBat for one year. Currently, Fomin is engaged in a number of other social projects, including military ones, focused on training Ukrainian cadets to enter military education programs in NATO countries like the USA, U.K., France or Canada.
“They will study for 2–4 years depending on the country, and when they return to Ukraine they could implement NATO educational principles here,” said Fomin.
This year, the most touching moment for Fomin was participating in the 2019 March of the Defenders of Ukraine: “It was amazing to hear gratitude from Ukrainians and I had the feeling that all this wasn’t done in vain,” he said.
Protector of Ukrainians in Syria
Tamer Tounsi, 47, general honorary consul of Ukraine in Syria, received his Ukrainian citizenship via the same order that restored Saakashvili’s.
Tounsi is a vital link between Syria and Ukraine since the Syrian embassy in Kyiv closed a year ago due to Syria’s recognition of the annexed Crimean Peninsula as a legitimate part of Russia.
However, thousands of Ukrainians remain in Syria, where death is routine because of the country’s ongoing civil war and Russia’s backing of dictator Bashar Assad. Many of them ask Tounsi for help to return to their homeland.
“I’m protecting all Ukrainian citizens in Syria. I sent more than 500 Ukrainian women back to Ukraine during the war,” he said.
In July, Tounsi helped a woman with two children to come back to Ukraine from a very dangerous area between Syria and Turkey.
“With the help of the Red Cross I took this lady, sent her from Aleppo to Damascus, from Damascus to Lebanon and then I sent her back to her homeland,” he said.
Tounsi also helped to evacuate ten Ukrainian sailors, who were got stranded in the Syrian port of Tartus in August 2017 because the ship owner was under international sanctions. The sailors had to stay in the port unpaid for almost five months.
Three and a half years ago, Tounsi sent a letter to Poroshenko for the first time asking for Ukrainian citizenship.
“He refused to sign it,” said Tounsi, although he already had all possible medals from the Ukrainian government.
Now that Tounsi has finally received a Ukrainian passport, he can benefit a great deal.
According to the annual Henley & Partners Passport Index in 2019, the Ukrainian passport was ranked 44th best in the world, having a visa-free regime with 126 countries, while the Syrian passport was one of the weakest in the world, only better than Iraq and Afghanistan.
“For me, it’s very good to get this passport to travel more and also to feel free in my work as general honorary consul in Syria,” said Tounsi, who also has textile businesses in Ukraine, Poland, Syria and Lebanon.
Fighter on the frontline
Nugzar Kandelaki, 60, originally from Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, became a Ukrainian citizen this summer thanks to the simplification of procedures that Zelensky ordered.
In 2015, Kandelaki left Georgia, where he had a wife, three daughters and a son, to defend Ukraine. He wanted to strike back against Russia for what the aggressor country did to Georgia during the 2008 conflict and subsequent occupation.
“When I left Georgia, I said that I was going to do business, but I knew that I was going to fight against Russia,” said Kandelaki.
He joined Ukraine’s Azov Battalion as a volunteer and fought for Ukraine for one year.
“In eastern Ukraine, I saw wounded young men. At the age of 18, they were already disabled. It was so hard to see boys at the age of my son in such conditions,” he said.
But due to health problems, the Georgian was not able to continue fighting.
Kandelaki didn’t want to go back home until the war with Russia was over. So his friends from the battalion advised him to settle in the city of Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine, surrounded by the Carpathian Mountains.
In fact, Kandelaki liked the place so much that he decided to stay and even to start a small business.
“The Carpathians remind me very much of Georgia, but you don’t have anything like Georgian wine,” said Kandelaki with a little sadness in his voice.
Kandelaki started to produce and sell carbonated drinks with natural ingredients — orange, raspberry, pear, pomegranate, lemon, peach and strawberry.
Moreover, his small business became one of the key reasons why Kandelaki desperately wanted Ukrainian citizenship when he filed documents. Two months ago, Andriy Biletsky, lawmaker and ex-commander of the Azov Battalion, informed him that now is the right time to do it.
“It’s very hard to do business in Ukraine without being citizen of the country. For example, I couldn’t send money from my firm to another by myself. I had to ask a Ukrainian citizen to do it,” he said.
Hockey player
Unlike the vast majority of foreigners struggling to get Ukrainian citizenship, some can obtain a passport quite easily, especially if they are athletes playing for an influential team.
Alexander Kostikov, 21, an ice hockey player with the Donbass Hockey Club, also got his Ukrainian citizenship on May 28. He was born in Moscow and used to play in the Russian Junior Hockey League.
When Kostikov turned 19 in 2017, a friend asked the athlete if he wanted to play for a Ukrainian club, located in the city of Druzhkivka in Donetsk Oblast, some 670 kilometers southeast from Kyiv.
“At first, I was a bit confused because of war. But I gathered my thoughts and decided to go to Ukraine,” said Kostikov.
Two year later, Kostikov is still happy about the choice he made and enjoying playing for his club. He and his team have become two-time champions in the Ukrainian Hockey League.
Getting a Ukrainian passport was quite an easy process for Kostikov since all the paperwork was handled by his club, owned by Borys Kolesnikov, a former loyalist of fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych.
While usually people usually wait for Ukrainian citizenship for years, Kostikov got it in just one month.
The athlete said he does not know the status of his Russian citizenship.
“I honestly don’t know what to answer, because the club does everything. I personally don’t have such connections with officials to do it,” he said.
Kostikov told the Kyiv Post that his Ukrainian citizenship has brought his sports career to the international level.
“I got a chance to play for Ukraine’s national hockey team. Why not use this chance?” he said.
