Ukraine offers citizenship to foreign volunteers joining forces to fight against Russia

In a continued attempt to defend Russia's military operation, foreign volunteers will be given Ukrainian citizenship, Ukraine's First Deputy Interior Minister Yevhen Yenin said on March 9. Foreign volunteers will be able to obtain Ukrainian citizenship if they want to, minister Yevhen Yenin said. The Kyiv Independent informed that as many as 20,000 foreign volunteers have joined Ukrainian forces to fight Russia since March 6. The Ukrainian government has been appealing to foreign citizens to help fight the Russian invasion. Despite the immense personal risk and uncertain legal grounds, some are responding to the call. 

On Tuesday, Ukraine temporarily lifted visa requirements for foreign volunteers who wish to enter the country and fight against Putin's Russia. This came after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy created the International Legion of Territorial Defense and called on volunteers to “join the defence of Ukraine, Europe, and the world.”

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba on Sunday said that anyone interested in participating in their war against Russia should contact Ukraine’s diplomatic missions in their respective countries. “Together we defeated Hitler, and we will defeat Putin, too,” Kuleba had said. 

Since 2014, when Russia-backed separatists seized parts of the Donbas region, foreign citizens have been fighting in Ukraine. While Western governments have extended support for those who wish to join Zelensky's side, Ukrainian embassies are openly involved in the recruitment of fighters.

Russia-Ukraine war

Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) on Tuesday said that since Russia's begun military operations, over 12,000 Russian forces have been killed. About 1036 armoured vehicles of different types, 48 aircraft, 80 helicopters, 303 tanks, 120 artillery pieces, and 56 MLRs were hit during the combat, according to the MFA data. 

On Tuesday, following Russia announcing ceasefire from 10 am (Moscow time) to provide humanitarian corridors in the cities of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, and Mariupol, the war-hit country Ukraine began the evacuation of civilians including foreign students from Sumy to Poltava. 

Earlier on Monday, the third round of talks between Ukraine and Russia was held in Belarus which was focused on opening humanitarian corridors from Ukrainian cities under fire. As a negotiator from Kyiv spoke of "positive results", Russia disagreed on the outcome and said their expectations were "not fulfilled". 

Image: AP