Ukrainian nationality law
Ukrainian nationality law details the conditions by which a person holds nationality of Ukraine. The primary law governing nationality requirements is the Law on Citizenship of Ukraine, which came into force on 1 March 2001. Any person born to a Ukrainian citizen parent, both within the country or abroad, automatically receives Ukrainian citizenship by birth. Foreign nationals may naturalize after living in the country for at least five years and showing proficiency in the Ukrainian language. Terminology. The distinction between the meaning of the terms citizenship and nationality is not always clear in the English language and  differs by country. Generally, nationality refers a person's legal belonging to a state and is the common term used in international treaties when referring to members of a state; citizenship refers to the set of rights and duties a person has in that nation. In the Soviet context, "nationality" was used to describe ethnicity rather than the population of a state. Soviet citizenship law was extremely permissive and allowed virtually any person in the world to become a Soviet citizen with no specific requirements. Union Republics in the late Soviet era used differing methods to delineate their new national  constituencies, based largely on the majority ethnic composition of that polity. In Ukraine, the post-Soviet definition of national membership relies on a link to the territorial bounds of the modern state by birth, permanent residence, or close family connection. Any person who fell within that definition became part of the Ukrainian nation. History. Ukrainian People's Republic. The Ukrainian People's Republic (UPR) established Ukrainian citizenship for the first time when it adopted citizenship laws on 2 and 4 March 1918, just as Soviet Russia recognized the UPR's independence under the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The laws instituted  jus soli, prohibited dual citizenship, and required "registration of citizenship through the process of proving one's right to citizenship through witnesses." The legislation was vulnerable to "undemocratic" abuse, and many provisions were "incorrectly formulated" so as to make compliance impossible. Therefore, the Central Council planned a revision. The German-backed Ukrainian State seized control in April and adopted a law based on the UPR's proposed changes on 2 July. This law claimed as citizens all Russian subjects who resided in Ukraine and did not formally reject Ukrainian citizenship. The UPR resumed power in December. The autonomous Western Oblast  of the UPR, whose territory remained in dispute with Poland, saw citizenship legislation enacted on 8 April 1919. This law likewise conferred citizenship on everyone who belonged to one of the oblast's communities and who did not reject it. Poland occupied most of the Western Oblast's territory by July, and the UPR recognized the territory as part of Poland in April 1920. In September of the same year, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the UPR, then in exile in Tarnów, stated in a letter that the Ukrainian State citizenship law remained valid. By November, the UPR had  decisively lost the last of its territory, which was divided in 1921 between Poland, Soviet Russia, and the Ukrainian SSR. Soviet Union. The Ukrainian SSR became a founding republic of the Soviet Union in 1922. The 1924 Soviet Union constitution affirmed "single Union citizenship" for the citizens of all Union republics. The 1929 Ukrainian SSR constitution stated that all Ukrainian SSR citizens were also Union citizens. Successive Soviet constitutions maintained this arrangement. Soviet Ukraine signed the Convention on the Nationality of Married Women in 1957 and ratified it the next year. The 1978 Soviet Union citizenship law delegated to the  presidiums of the supreme soviets of the Union republics the authority to grant republican citizenship—and thereby Union citizenship—to resident non-citizens. A 1981 decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR provided for naturalization in this way. This procedure "applied to non-Soviet citizens only and not to Soviet citizens who moved from one Soviet republic to another." The Ukrainian SSR, like other Union republics, neither made laws on nor administered its own citizenship. Soviet law did not provide for documentation of republican citizenship. Thus, Ukrainian SSR citizenship had no practical consequences and its  existence was dubious. Independent Ukrainian citizenship and the end of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union allowed the Union republics to make laws to govern their own citizenships beginning May 1990. The Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, adopted 16 July, established Ukrainian SSR citizenship independent of and alongside Union citizenship, and envisaged further legislation to govern the acquisition and loss of this new citizenship. Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union on 24 August 1991. In the Verkhovna Rada, factions of nationalists, unreformed Communists, and the former "nomenklatura" in power supported different citizenship policies. The nationalists wanted citizenship for  all ethnic Ukrainians. The Communists desired no independent citizenship or, when the collapse of the Soviet Union loomed, dual citizenship with Russia. Both nationalists and the nomenklatura disfavored dual citizenship. They feared that Russia would grant its own citizenship to Ukrainian citizens to justify intervention in Ukraine on behalf of Russian dual citizens. The first citizenship legislation resulted from compromise between these three factions. The Law on the Succession of Ukraine, which took effect on 5 October, extended citizenship only to Soviet citizens with permanent residence in Ukraine as of independence. The first Citizenship Law entered into force on 13  November. This Law allowed those born in Ukraine or with parents or grandparents born in Ukraine to register for citizenship, and neither prohibited nor protected multiple citizenship. Its preamble proscribed "deprivation of citizenship", or denaturalization as the Soviet authorities had deployed "against the enemies of Soviet power", as well as deprivation of the right to change citizenship. The following month, the Soviet Union dissolved. Since independence. The 1978 Ukrainian SSR constitution remained in effect but the Verkhovna Rada removed references to Soviet Union citizenship effective 18 July 1992. Ukraine ratified a new constitution on 28 June 1996 that banned deprivation  of citizenship and of the right to change citizenship. From 1991 to 2005, Ukraine repeatedly expanded the grounds on which people anywhere could register for citizenship by birth on or through relatives born on Ukrainian or formerly Ukrainian territory. To defend its own "compatriots abroad", Russia campaigned from 1993 to 1997 for multiple citizenship in other post-Soviet states including Ukraine. Though some in Ukraine favored Russia's efforts, the authorities continued to oppose them. Restrictions on multiple citizenship tightened in the late 1990s but softened in the subsequent decade. To reduce dual citizenship in cases of naturalization, Ukraine formed  agreements with other post-Soviet states to establish a simplified, free-of-charge procedure to change citizenship from one country's to the other's. Ukraine and Uzbekistan implemented the first such agreement in October 1998 and enabled some 28,000 formerly deported Crimean Tatars to switch from Uzbek to Ukrainian citizenship. Though Russia and some other countries declined, Ukraine also concluded agreements with Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. Some of these agreements later ended, and by 2017, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry reported only that such treaties remained in force with Belarus, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. In 2002, Ukraine acceded to  the 1967 Protocol to the 1951 Refugee Convention, then to the Convention itself. Ukraine signed the European Convention on Nationality in 2003 and ratified it in 2006. That year, Ukraine also became the first country to sign the Council of Europe Convention on the Avoidance of Statelessness in Relation to State Succession, but never ratified it. The country acceded to the Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons and the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness in 2013. Definition of Ukrainian citizenship. Citizens of Ukraine typically fall into at least one of the following categories: Acquisition and loss of  citizenship. Individuals automatically receive Ukrainian citizenship at birth if at least one parent is a Ukrainian citizen, whether they are born within Ukraine or overseas. Children born in the country but do not acquire any citizenship from their parents at birth (or only acquire citizenship of a country from which a parent has fled from as a recognized refugee) are also Ukrainian citizens by birth. Abandoned children are treated as if they were born to Ukrainian parents if their origin cannot be determined. Foreigners may naturalize as Ukrainian citizens after living in the country for a continuous period of  at least five years. Applicants must have been issued an immigration permit, demonstrate proficiency in the Ukrainian language, and renounce any foreign nationalities. The residence requirement is reduced to two years if an applicant is married to a Ukrainian citizen, or if they hold refugee or asylum status. Citizens who are permanently domiciled abroad can voluntarily relinquish their Ukrainian citizenship by making a declaration of renunciation, provided that the declarant already possesses another citizenship or a legal document from a foreign state specifying that another citizenship will be granted on the loss of their Ukrainian citizenship. Recognition of an individual 's overseas residence requires the completion of an administrative process to become a legal non-resident of Ukraine. This process is typically only done when outgoing emigrants leave the country with the express intention of permanent settlement abroad and is difficult to complete for citizens who departed on non-immigrant visas. Ukrainians who did not undergo this process before settlement overseas and who no longer possess documentation for "propiska" (legal residency) are in practice barred from successfully renouncing Ukrainian citizenship. Citizenship may be involuntarily deprived from individuals who acquire foreign citizenship without renouncing their Ukrainian citizenship, naturalized persons who fraudulently  acquired Ukrainian citizenship, and those who voluntarily enter military service in another country without mandatory conscription. Loss of citizenship under these conditions does not occur automatically. The Ministry of Internal Affairs must formally present documentary evidence that individuals who fall under an applicable category already possesses a foreign nationality and all final decisions on deprivation must be approved by the President. The government rarely initiates this formal deprivation process due to its length and cost. Between 2005 and mid-2017, 87,376 people lost Ukrainian citizenship. The vast majority of them lost citizenship voluntarily or under facilitated procedures for citizenship changes through  bilateral agreements with other countries. Only 333 people were involuntarily stripped of their citizenship during this period of time. Dual citizenship. According to the Constitution of Ukraine, Article 4, only one citizenship exists in Ukraine. This does not explicitly deny dual (external) citizenship, so there are citizens of Ukraine who hold dual citizenship. According to Article 19 of the Ukrainian Law on Citizenship the voluntary acquisition by a citizen of Ukraine of citizenship of another state is the basis for losing Ukrainian citizenship. Ukrainian law also states that, after a foreign citizen gains Ukrainian citizenship, he must renounce the non -Ukrainian citizenship(s) within two years. A 2009 estimate put the number of Ukrainians with more than one passport from 300,000 to a few million. Within Ukrainian borders, Ukrainian citizens who also hold other citizenships are considered to be solely Ukrainian citizens. On 8 February 2014, the Verkhovna Rada proposed a bill to criminalize the act of holding two citizenships. On 20 December 2021, President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a bill into law allowing dual citizenship. Visa requirements. In June 2017, Ukrainian citizens had visa-free or visa on arrival access to 132 countries and territories, ranking the Ukrainian passport 42nd in  the world according to the Visa Restrictions Index.