Talk:Ukrainian nationality law

Ukrainian Law currently does not allow dual citizenship, but decision on involuntary termination of Ukrainian citizenship have been rare
I must admit this is a guess by me... Can anybody find some references to proof it? — Mariah-Yulia (talk) 12:12, 10 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Ukraine currently does not recognize dual citizenship. It cannot prohibit anyone from acquiring another citizenship, and acquisition of a foreign citizenship can serve only as a ground for loss of Ukrainian citizenship. I am going to correct the statement about the dual citizenship and cite the Ukrainian constitution. Almikul (talk) 09:41, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

New rules coming up
A new draft law is about to became a reality allowing foreign nationals who serve or have served in Ukraine's army will be eligible to obtain citizenship after living in the country for three years, instead of the current five years. —  Yulia Romero  • Talk to me!  19:36, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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History section and future edits
I just added a history section and removed newly redundant info from the intro. There is still a ways to go (e.g., the article has inaccurately represented for years that Ukraine has "automatic loss of citizenship"). Knr5 (talk) 21:32, 1 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your work Knr5; but your edits have actually made it look like dual citizenship is legal in Ukraine. But it is not. According to Article 19 of the Ukrainian Law on Citizenship: The citizenship of Ukraine is lost: If a citizen of Ukraine has voluntarily acquired the citizenship of another state after attaining his/her majority. I am well aware that this law is not really actively enforced in Ukraine, but it is boldly saying that dual citizenship is not possible in Ukraine. I attempted to change the article to make it clear that acording to law dual citizenship is not possible if you have Ukrainian Citizenship. —  Yulia Romero  •  Talk to me!  18:09, 20 August 2021 (UTC)


 * Those aren't my edits as I haven't had time to edit that section yet at all; all my edits were in the lead and in the history section. I have some more sources clarifying this that have not yet been added (including other pages in the Shevel report already cited). I'll get around to the full explanation eventually. But I recommend against using the Foreign Ministry link you provided, since it is a translation of an old version of the law. For instance, in Article 19, the phrasing "Citizenship of Ukraine shall be lost" was changed in 2005 to "The grounds for loss of citizenship are", and now it's clear that Article 19 loss happens only upon presidential decree. My secondary sources say that Ukraine has no automatic loss of citizenship (like India, Germany, etc.) and no punishment for failing to renounce Ukrainian citizenship, and the current regime is nebulous by design and gives the prez huge discretion. Knr5 (talk) 20:48, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * There is new legislation on dual citizenship on the way.... Three bills allowing dual citizenship have been tabled in Parliament. Maybe better to wait for what becomes of those????? Sorry about the confusion; I thought I remembered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky making claims he wanted to make dual citizenship legal; so I assumpted it was illegal now.... It is confusing though, since many people seem to believe dual citizenship is illegal in Ukraine. Sorry if I attributed edits to you that you did not made. —  Yulia Romero  • Talk to me!  21:32, 20 August 2021 (UTC)
 * I did remove the Foreign Ministry link with a 2021 one from UNIAN; thanks for pointing out the Ukrainian Law on Citizenship was changed in 2005 and the Foreign Ministry link was outdated (I did not know that....). —  Yulia Romero  • Talk to me!  21:53, 20 August 2021 (UTC)

Edits this year
@Horserice has since March a lot of previous contributors' work on this article, including several verified claims of mine. This has been done without citation to policy or discussion on this page. Where policy was cited, it appears to have been wrong (e.g., deleting all cited claims in the lead on the grounds of WP:LEADCITE without moving them anywhere else). Lots of my prose was deleted and replaced for no stated reason. I can only guess that Horserice prefers their own prose, especially owing to the copied blurbs of prose they wrote for other articles, though I strongly disagree with this.

Most troubling is the new POV of the History section, which now implies that:
 * Ukrainian nationality law was born on Russian soil (I had previously only included countries for which independent Ukraine is a continuator, and the inclusion of Russian imperial law within the scope of Ukrainian nationality law is not source-attested. I know that this user made similar inclusions in the nationality law articles about other former colonies such as India and Israel, which are equally worrisome.)
 * The Ukrainian People's Republic was called "Revolutionary Ukraine" (no source)
 * Ukrainians had material SSR citizenship in the Soviet Union (evidence to the contrary was removed).

Information about te attempt to reestablish the Ukrainian State nationality law in the UPR was also deleted. Finally, all the images in that section were deleted because they "aren't particularly useful", also with no policy cited and even though they were appropriate under WP:IMGCONTENT. There are other problems I haven't addressed here yet (Terminology section could be reduced to an endnote or omitted entirely, for example), but these are the most concerning.

Horserice, would you care to justify the removal of all that content from this article per WP:REVEXP and address the new content per Help:Edit summary? @Yulia Romero may be interested in this and I'll loop WikiProject Ukraine in as well. Knr5 (talk) 12:30, 6 October 2022 (UTC)


 * Let's start with the lead. Here's the old version:
 * "Ukrainian nationality law is the law that governs the acquisition and loss of citizenship of Ukraine. This body of law includes the constitution, several treaties, and the Law on Citizenship of Ukraine. Key secondary legislation comprises the procedure, established by the president, for the authorities to decide on and record each case of acquisition or loss of citizenship. There also exists a body of administrative case law."
 * I just don't think this is a very effective summary of the article content. It's extremely generic and doesn't provide any substantive information other than "this body of law exists". Compare this to the current version of the lead that gives a brief on how actually to obtain Ukrainian nationality and a very short history. I will concede that I incorrectly cited WP:LEADCITE, it probably should have been MOS:INTRO because this old lead doesn't stand on its own.


 * I can only guess that Horserice prefers their own prose
 * I trust that you're not intentionally trying to be abrasive but I don't see why you're pointing this out? Every editor will prefer their own prose.


 * Ukrainian nationality law was born on Russian soil (I had previously only included countries for which independent Ukraine is a continuator, and the inclusion of Russian imperial law within the scope of Ukrainian nationality law is not source-attested. I know that this user made similar inclusions in the nationality law articles about other former colonies such as India and Israel, which are equally worrisome.)
 * This isn't what my added content says though. While the first set of nationality regulations applicable to Ukraine were certainly those of the Russian Empire, that doesn't detract from the separate nature of current Ukrainian nationality law. The added content provides context on how the current regulations came to be, and omitting that context would leave this article incomplete. The content on imperial law is cited, so unclear on why you're saying it's not attested.
 * It seems that you take issue with the inclusion of past colonial regulations in nationality law articles? But they also fall under the body of legislation that had legal effect in India, Israel, or whatever other jurisdiction so it should be entirely valid elaborating on that content in these articles. In Ukraine's case, the most substantial developments with regard to the law currently in force were enacted by the UkSSR at the very end of the Soviet era and by the Rada during the immediate post-independence period and so illustrating a clear progression in the evolution of the law during this time should be uncontroversial. While the regulations created by the post-WWI Ukrainian states are certainly significant and deserve greater attention, the legislative situation is unlike that of the Baltic states, where current law is actually a continuation of pre-WWII legislation. However, given the ongoing conflict, it is understandable that further inclusion of content on Russian and Soviet law can trigger sensitivity and if you would like to suggest some trimming then please do.


 * The Ukrainian People's Republic was called "Revolutionary Ukraine" (no source)
 * I mean, this is a subsection title meant to be descriptive of the time period since this part contains information on both the UPR and Ukrainian State. But there was also the Ukrainian People's Republic, West Ukrainian People's Republic, Ukrainian People's Republic of Soviets, Odessa Soviet Republic, etc that all existed during this period. If you have a better title, please suggest it. But just labeling that subsection with "Ukrainian People's Republic" like you did isn't accurate. This is like saying that I need a source for "Constituent Soviet republic", but you know what the meaning is there.


 * Ukrainians had material SSR citizenship in the Soviet Union (evidence to the contrary was removed).
 * ??? I have "republican citizenship was symbolic and held no substantive meaning" written in the article.


 * Information about te attempt to reestablish the Ukrainian State nationality law in the UPR was also deleted.
 * As far as I can see in the provided diff, I don't know what omitted information you're referring to. Can you specify?


 * all the images in that section were deleted because they "aren't particularly useful", also with no policy cited and even though they were appropriate under WP:IMGCONTENT
 * There are separate articles on the Ukrainian and Soviet passports and plenty of pictures illustrating those documents there. More appropriate pictures would be some that show naturalising Ukrainian citizens, for example. As for the images showing the first page of the 1918 and 1991 citizenship laws, I question the usefulness of images of Cyrillic text in an English article and I would also point to MOS:TEXTASIMAGES.


 * Terminology section could be reduced to an endnote or omitted entirely, for example
 * Because the terms nationality and citizenship do have country-specific variation in their meanings, I think it's definitely important for this to be elaborated on as I've done. But I am certainly open to suggestions on how you would want to trim it down. Horserice (talk) 07:45, 7 October 2022 (UTC)