Russia’s announcement this week that it intends to issue passports to residents of the breakaway Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk is provocative—Kiev has called it “aggression” and Washington has labeled it “provocative”—but it is hardly novel.Granting passports is, in effect, the equivalent of handing out citizenship, and conferring passports to citizens of another country is not illegal under international law. After all, plenty of Americans have dual British citizenship and passports from both countries, for example.What is unusual in Russia’s approach, however, is its use of passports as a tool to further its foreign-policy goals, sometimes meaning territorial expansion. …read more
Source: The Atlantic
