Recently, a man turned to our colleagues for help. His name is Kostyantyn, he was born in 1968 in Uzbekistan. There he graduated from school, received a passport of a citizen of the USSR and married for the first time. Later he became a father of a son, and in 1989 the family moved to Ukraine, to the Odesa oblast.
Here in the early 2000s, Kostyantyn lost his passport. Unfortunately, he did not apply to the relevant authorities in time to restore the document. In the future, this in turn led to serious consequences. In 2012, the man applied to the Loziv District Department of the State Migration Service of Ukraine in Kharkiv Oblast, where it became clear that it was impossible to determine his citizenship due to the loss of documents.
Since then, Kostyantyn and his family have lived permanently in Ukraine, in the Loziv district of the Kharkiv oblast. He and his wife are raising seven children, including a child with disabilities.
In 2020, after long attempts to solve the problem with the lost documents and citizenship, employees of the Loziv Center for Social Services for Families, Children and Youth (CSSFCY) recommended man to apply to the Kharkiv office of the Charitable Fund “Right to Protection” (R2P).
After a thorough interview, the lawyer of the R2P began a long and painstaking work. A request was sent to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Uzbekistan regarding the possible belonging of Kostyantyn to the citizenship of Uzbekistan. Thanks to the quick response of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Uzbekistan, it was possible to confirm that the man is not a citizen of this country.
A number of documents from the Odesa oblast were also collected in order to confirm the fact of Kostyantyn’s permanent residence in Ukraine as of August 24, 1991, which made it possible to establish this fact in court.
In October 2020, the above-mentioned court decision came into force, and Kostyantyn now had the legal grounds for acquiring Ukrainian citizenship. All that remained was to wait for changes to the current legislation, which would allow him to obtain the status and a document of a stateless person.
And finally, this day has come. Kostyantyn’s application for recognition as a stateless person was one of the first to be registered by the Loziv District Department of the State Migration Service of Ukraine in Kharkiv Oblast and then sent to the Main Department of the State Migration Service of Ukraine in Kharkiv Oblast for further processing and consideration. For the period while Kostyantyn’s application is being processed, he was provided with the relevant certificate – the first document which confirmed his identity and a certain status in Ukraine.
Kostyantyn and his wife are well aware that this is only the first step on the difficult path to Ukrainian citizenship. They are smiling because they hope that soon Kostyantyn will receive a passport of a citizen of Ukraine and will be able to get a job and benefit both his large family and the country of which he dreams of becoming a citizen.
We thank the employees of Loziv CSSFCY, Loziv City District Court of Kharkiv region, and employees of Loziv District Department of the SMS of Ukraine in Kharkiv region Rakhima Krasnorutska and Evhenia Pomnikova for high professionalism, incredible sensitivity, and constant willingness to cooperate and help people!
Special thanks to our colleagues for this hard work, which allowed Kostyantyn to get one step closer to Ukrainian citizenship.
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