MOSCOW, 18 February 2022, (TON): Ivan Malyuta, a resident of Donetsk, a city in eastern Ukraine controlled by Moscow-backed separatists, applied for Russian citizenship this month and said he, his wife and three children will soon be getting Russian passports.

He said “at a Donetsk migration service office “I want to be a citizen of the Russian Federation. We are moving towards this, aren’t we?”

Malyuta and his family will join more than 720,000 residents of rebel-held areas in eastern Ukraine who have received Russian citizenship and passports in a fast-track procedure widely seen as an attempt to underscore Russia’s influence in the region.

Russia threw its weight behind a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine in 2014, shortly after annexing Crimea in response to a popular uprising in Kyiv ousting a Kremlin-friendly president.

Moscow has denied deploying troops or weapons to the rebel-held areas, with government officials repeatedly stressing that Russia is not a party to the conflict, which has killed over 14,000 people.

Ukraine has been appalled by the efforts amid rising tensions and fears of a new invasion. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged the European Union last week to impose sanctions on Russia for “its illegal mass issuing of Russian passports to Ukrainian citizens.”