Donetsk, Jul 2 - DAN. Some 1,000 Donetsk People’s Republic residents left for Russia’s Rostov region on Thursday to collect their Russian passports as cross-border traffic resumed after the easing of COVID-19 lockdown measures, the DPR Transport Ministry press service told the Donetsk News Agency.
“The DPR Transport Ministry resumed the work to arrange special trips for residents to Russian passport centres,” the press service said.
The first group numbers some 1,000 people who are residents of Donetsk, Makeyevka, Gorlovka, Yenakiyevo, Khartsyzsk, Torez, Snezhnoye and other DPR settlements. Passports can be collected in Matveyev Kurgan, Pokrovskoye, Kuibyshevo and Rodiono-Nesvetaiskoye.
Eighteen transport operators use 23 vehicles to take DPR residents to Russian passport centres on July 2, the ministry said.
On April 13, DPR authorities suspended travel to Russia for fast track Russian citizenship in connection with the threat of spreading of the coronavirus infection. Three months later, DPR Head Denis Pushilin lifted those restrictions.
On April 24, 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the degree on determining groups of foreign nationals eligible to obtain Russian citizenship under a simplified procedure. The document specifically eases Russian citizenship rules for residents of the Donbass Republics. The first passports were issued on July 14, 2019.*jk