State employees in occupied Donetsk region have to renounce Ukrainian citizenship by May 

He shared the information on Espreso TV.

"Ukraine does not recognize Russian passports and will not be able to prosecute people for obtaining them in the occupied territories. We will need to take a differentiated approach to assessing whether a person has such a passport. Did the person go for the passport on their own or was forced to get it?" Harmash noted.

According to the president of the Center for Research on Social Prospects of Donbas, people in the occupied territories have no choice but to obtain a Russian passport.

"After Putin's famous decree of April 27, people in the occupied territories have no choice. On the same day, in the Donetsk region, all so-called state organizations were ordered to submit documents for obtaining a Russian passport by May 5, and to write a renunciation of Ukrainian citizenship. The occupiers also warned people that if they quit, it would be considered an act of disloyalty to the Russian Federation," Harmash added.

• Over the past week, the pace of forced passportization of the population in the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region has significantly decreased. The reason is the mass evacuation among Russians and their henchmen.

• Investigators and forensic experts continue to search for and identify the victims of Russian war crimes.