The Interior Ministry of Russia Declares Ilya Yashin a “Stateless Person”

The Interior Ministry has issued a certificate for Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin for use in court, stating that he is a “stateless person.” Yashin reported this on his Telegram channel.

Yashin concluded that he may have been stripped of his citizenship. However, he does not have the relevant document in hand.

“Who made the decision to strip me of Russian citizenship acquired at birth? What was the procedure? How does this decision align with the explicit constitutional ban on depriving Russians of their citizenship? If the information from the Russian Interior Ministry, submitted to the court, is confirmed, then we are dealing with an extremely important precedent and a new stage in the arbitrariness of Putin’s regime,” Yashin writes.

If this is the case, it would be the first time a Russian citizen has been stripped of citizenship acquired by birth. Lawyers note that it is too early to draw conclusions.

“We need to request additional information; there may be some confusion. Current laws do not allow for deprivation of citizenship acquired at birth. Only citizenship that was acquired can be revoked,” attorney Evgeny Smirnov told IStories.

What happened seems more like a clerical error, believes attorney Valeria Vetoshkina.

“Ilya is correct in stating that it is impossible to deprive a Russian citizen of their citizenship on the basis of the Constitution and the law on citizenship. And anything more I might say would be speculation and an attempt to justify legal lawlessness — there are grounds for terminating citizenship if it was acquired as a result of admission to citizenship. Many simply do not realize that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were admitted to Russian citizenship through the process of option, not by birth [this refers to cases when a person lived in another Soviet republic but after the collapse decided to obtain Russian citizenship. — Ed.],” she says.

Attorney Mikhail Biryukov asked the court to return the case (this refers to the criminal case on violating the activities of a “foreign agent,” for which the Interior Ministry issued the certificate) to the prosecutor’s office due to contradictions in the prosecution’s materials. The materials state that Yashin “has been a citizen of the Russian Federation since birth,” which contradicts the information in the Interior Ministry certificate.

The court did not return the case, but did summon to court the investigator who handled the case, an employee of the Interior Ministry’s main information database, and an employee of the information center of the Western Administrative District police department in Moscow.

Previously, it was reported that Russian authorities have begun revoking acquired citizenship from activists and draft-dodger migrants. Among those stripped of citizenship were people for whom it was their only citizenship. For example, Vyacheslav Popov, convicted in Russia of preparing a terrorist attack, was born in the Byelorussian SSR and received a Russian passport after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This summer, he was stripped of his citizenship for committing a crime. Citizenship was also revoked for “threatening national security” from political strategist Dmitry Kisiev, who received a Russian passport after the annexation of Crimea in 2014.