Documentation, Identity, and Return: A Policy Road Map for Ukraine's Citizens in Russian-occupied Territory

Executive Summary

Ukraine formally possesses the legal architecture to help citizens leave occupied territory and re-enter Ukrainian-controlled life: resolutions govern identification, consular procedures exist on paper, and a series of laws address movement, citizenship, and displaced persons. Yet the practical pathway does not exist. Documentation confiscated during filtration, expired passports with no renewal mechanism, and the disbandment of the Ministry of Reintegration have together produced a system that is legally coherent but operationally inaccessible.

This brief makes three core arguments. First, Russia’s systematic destruction and replacement of Ukrainian documentation constitutes a deliberate instrument of occupation control, extensively documented by the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU). Second, the Ukrainian government’s response has been fragmented: legislation has outpaced institutional capacity, and no single body owns the return pipeline as an integrated system. Third, European partners - particularly the United Kingdom, Estonia, and Germany - possess directly applicable institutional experience and technical infrastructure that could rapidly accelerate a workable solution.

The central recommendation is that Ukraine should designate the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the legally authorised body for remote identity verification abroad, drawing on European models for documentary flexibility and biometric alternatives, and reconstitute a single coordinating institution for the full return journey.

I. The Problem: Law Without Access

Ukraine does not lack legislation. Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 1545 (December 2024) assigns powers relating to temporarily occupied territories to the Ministry for Communities and Territories Development,^[1] and Resolution No. 1709 (2025) formally establishes procedures for remote identity verification, including videoconferencing and the involvement of foreign units of the state enterprise “Document.”^[2] The broader legal framework draws on Ukraine’s laws on temporarily occupied territories, citizenship, freedom of movement, internally displaced persons, and citizens’ rights protection.

Yet despite this formal architecture, the state has created a legal possibility for return without creating a practical mechanism for accessing it. Three structural failures explain the gap.

Institutional fragmentation. The liquidation of the Ministry of Reintegration removed the single accountable centre for return as an integrated process. Its functions have been dispersed across multiple ministries, none of which holds comprehensive responsibility.^[3] The result is a pipeline with no owner: documentation, logistics, status legalisation, social adaptation, and reintegration each sit in different institutional silos.

No consular identification infrastructure. The State Migration Service, which is responsible for identification, has no infrastructure abroad. The only institution with a permanent foreign presence - the MFA consular network - has not been formally empowered or resourced to carry out identity verification functions. Citizens abroad therefore fall between institutions.

Expired and confiscated documents. A significant proportion of Ukrainians in occupied territory hold expired passports, have had documents confiscated during filtration, or have been coerced into surrendering Ukrainian identification in exchange for Russian documentation. For these individuals, normal registration and verification channels are entirely inaccessible.

II. Documentation as a Tool of Occupation: The OHCHR Evidence

The documentation crisis facing individual Ukrainians is not incidental to occupation - it is a central mechanism of it. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has systematically documented how Russia uses identity documentation as an instrument of coercive control across Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea.

Filtration and document confiscation

HRMMU’s monitoring has consistently recorded that Ukrainian identity documents - passports, birth certificates, property titles - are routinely inspected, photographed, and in many cases confiscated during filtration operations at checkpoints and “evacuation” processing points.^[4] Detention reports indicate that individuals who cannot produce documents verifying their identity, residence, or employment history are at heightened risk of prolonged detention and coercive interrogation. The practical effect is that departing the occupied territories safely requires documentation, while the occupation system actively degrades that documentation.

Passportisation as administrative coercion

Russia’s passportisation programme - the mass issuance of Russian Federation passports to residents of occupied territory - operates by conditioning access to basic services on Russian documentation. HRMMU reports that access to healthcare, employment, pension payments, bank accounts, and school enrolment for children has been made contingent on holding a Russian passport or cooperating with Russian registration requirements.^[5] Those who retain their Ukrainian identity documents but refuse Russian ones face systematic exclusion from the administrative life of the occupied territory, while simultaneously losing access to Ukrainian state services because their Ukrainian documents cannot be renewed or updated through normal channels.

Torture, detention, and loss of documentation during captivity

OHCHR’s 2025 thematic report on the treatment of civilians deprived of their liberty documents that individuals detained during filtration or for alleged resistance activity frequently emerge from detention without their personal documents, which are retained by Russian security services.^[6] For such individuals, re-entering Ukrainian-controlled territory requires proving identity to Ukrainian authorities without the documentation that Ukrainian law currently requires.

Property rights and documentation

The nexus between documentation and property is equally documented. HRMMU has recorded that inheritance, property registration, and real estate transfers in occupied territories are systematically being processed through Russian legal structures, with outcomes tied to the holder’s documentation status.^[7] Individuals who have retained Ukrainian documentation but have had it confiscated, lost, or expired find themselves unable to contest property seizures through either the Ukrainian or Russian systems.^[8]

Taken together, this evidence establishes that the documentation challenge facing returning Ukrainians is not primarily administrative complexity. It is the intended outcome of a systematic Russian policy to destroy the documentary basis of Ukrainian identity in the occupied territories. A Ukrainian response must be calibrated to that deliberate severity.

III. European Precedents for Remote Identification

Ukraine does not need to design a remote identification system from first principles. European partners have accumulated directly applicable institutional knowledge across four distinct contexts. Each offers a different dimension of the problem.

United Kingdom: The BN(O) Precedent and COVID-Era Remote Verification

The most instructive European comparator is the United Kingdom’s administration of the British National (Overseas) visa scheme for Hong Kong residents. Launched in January 2021 against the backdrop of the National Security Law, the BN(O) route was designed to provide a legal pathway to the UK for up to five million Hong Kongers - many of whom held only partial, expired, or inaccessible documentation.^[9]

The COVID-19 pandemic then created an immediate operational crisis directly analogous to Ukraine’s situation today. UK Visa and Citizenship Application Services (UKVCAS) centres in Hong Kong were closed or severely restricted, making in-person biometric enrolment impossible. The Home Office responded by developing: (i) app-based facial recognition as a substitute for in-person biometric enrolment; (ii) suspension of standard passport validity requirements, accepting alternative evidence of identity including community organisation attestation and cross-referencing with Home Office biometric records from prior visa applications; and (iii) provision for applicants whose Hong Kong SAR passports had been surrendered, confiscated, or were inaccessible to apply on the basis of alternative documentary evidence and witness statements.^[10]

The parallel to Ukraine’s situation is precise. Hong Kong residents whose identity documents were unavailable or compromised by the actions of a hostile authority needed to prove identity to a friendly foreign government. The Home Office procedural toolkit - particularly its witness attestation framework, biometric cross-referencing against existing government databases, and app-based remote enrolment - is directly transferable to Ukrainian consular practice. The UK should be invited to share this caseworker expertise through a formal technical cooperation agreement with Ukraine’s MFA, potentially embedded within the existing UK–Ukraine bilateral partnership structures.

Estonia: Digital Identity Infrastructure and Bilateral Cooperation

Estonia operates the most advanced national digital identity infrastructure in Europe, including the e-Residency programme and the X-Road data exchange platform. Estonia has already concluded bilateral cooperation agreements with Ukraine on digital governance, including a roadmap for integrating X-Road with Ukraine’s DIIA digital services platform.^[11] Estonia’s particular institutional knowledge of managing identity for persons with incomplete or Soviet-era documentation - accumulated through decades of work with stateless residents - gives it highly relevant experience.

A formal Estonian–Ukrainian programme to build digital identity solutions for occupied territory residents could directly address the technical gap in remote verification identified in Resolution No. 1709. Specifically, Estonia could support the development of: a digital identity layer within DIIA enabling remote biometric verification; cross-border access to Ukrainian civil registry archives (vital for confirming pre-war identity); and training for Ukrainian consular staff in digital identity adjudication.

Germany: Simplified Registration and Biometric Substitution

Germany has registered the largest number of Ukrainian refugees in the EU and developed streamlined procedures under its Foreigners’ Registration Authority (Ausländerbehörde) for arrivals without standard documentation.^[12] Germany’s use of biometric photography and fingerprinting as primary identifiers - substituting for expired or absent passports - has produced a substantial operational dataset on the reliability of biometric-first identification. This experience is directly applicable to the design of a Ukrainian identification road map that must function without standard documentation for a significant proportion of applicants.

EU Temporary Protection Directive: A Framework for Alternative Documentation

The EU’s activation of the Temporary Protection Directive (Council Decision 2022/382) explicitly accommodated Ukrainians without valid identity documents, permitting registration on the basis of self-declaration and available alternative evidence.^[13] The procedural guidance developed by the European Commission, and the national-level implementation practices developed across member states, constitute the most comprehensive existing body of knowledge on alternative documentation procedures for Ukrainians specifically. By March 2025, more than 6.7 million Ukrainians had been processed under this framework.^[14] The documentation methods validated across this population - which included a significant proportion of individuals from occupied or recently de-occupied territories - provide a tested foundation for Ukraine’s own remote identification procedures.

IV. Recommendations

The following recommendations are addressed to the Ukrainian government and to European partners.

For the Ukrainian Government

• Formally empower the MFA consular network for full-scale identification. Issue a normative act assigning the MFA the function of remote identity establishment for Ukrainian citizens abroad, including: videoconferencing and witness confirmation; access to civil registry and archival data; and procedures for confirming citizenship without physical presence in Ukraine. This should be operationalised as an amendment to Resolution No. 1709 with an accompanying implementation timeline.
• Publish an accessible, practical road map for leaving occupation. The road map should set out step-by-step procedures for each stage - documentation, movement, border crossing, status regularisation, reintegration - in plain language accessible to individuals with limited digital access.
• Reconstitute a single institutional centre of responsibility. Whether through a designated unit within an existing ministry or a new inter-agency coordinating body, one institution must be accountable for the end-to-end return pipeline. The dispersal of functions following the Ministry of Reintegration’s liquidation has produced systemic failure of coordination.
• Establish a biometric pre-registration system. Drawing on Estonian expertise and the DIIA platform, develop a remote biometric pre-registration process allowing citizens in occupied territory to establish an identity record before departing, reducing their documentation burden at the point of crossing.

For European Partners

• United Kingdom: Share BN(O) caseworker guidance, remote enrolment procedures, and witness attestation frameworks with Ukraine’s MFA through a dedicated technical cooperation stream. This is a natural extension of existing UK–Ukraine partnership commitments and directly applies hard-won Home Office operational experience.
• Estonia: Formalise and resource the Ukraine–Estonia digital identity cooperation track, specifically targeting civil registry integration and biometric verification capacity within the DIIA platform. Offer secondments of Estonian digital identity specialists to the Ukrainian MFA.
• Germany and EU member states: Share the documentation procedures developed under the Temporary Protection Directive, including national-level guidance on alternative evidence and biometric substitution, to inform the design of Ukraine’s identification road map.
• EU institutions: The European Commission should formally recognise remote identity verification as part of its Ukraine integration support package, potentially through the EU–Ukraine association framework, and fund a dedicated technical assistance programme for MFA consular capacity-building.

V. Conclusion

Ukraine’s documentation crisis is not a bureaucratic inconvenience. It is the compounded result of a deliberate Russian strategy to destroy the documentary basis of Ukrainian identity in occupied territory, combined with an institutional fragmentation on the Ukrainian side that has left no one responsible for the return journey. The legal framework exists. The operational capacity does not.

European partners - particularly the United Kingdom, Estonia, and Germany - have accumulated precisely the institutional knowledge Ukraine needs: experience managing identity for populations whose documents have been destroyed, confiscated, or made inaccessible by hostile political action. The BN(O) scheme’s COVID-era procedures, Estonia’s digital identity infrastructure, and Germany’s biometric registration system are not distant models requiring adaptation from scratch. They are ready-made toolkits awaiting transfer.

This is ultimately about Ukraine’s ability to help its own people come home - and to ensure that the millions who have endured occupation can re-enter Ukrainian-controlled life with their identity, rights, and dignity intact. The technical solutions exist. What is required is the political will to deploy them, and a Ukrainian state apparatus that is empowered and accountable enough to deliver.

Update, June 2026 (Jade McGlynn). This recommendation has since been partially adopted. On 5 June 2026 the Cabinet of Ministers launched a one-year experimental project allowing identity certificates for return to Ukraine to be issued to citizens born after 24 August 1991 in the temporarily occupied territories, even where no record of them survives in the state registers. Where the registers are insufficient, identity can be confirmed by close relatives, including by video link, and the certificate is issued free of charge through designated Ukrainian diplomatic missions, initially in Turkey, Georgia, Armenia and Kazakhstan. The measure is a time-limited pilot rather than a permanent route, so it meets part of what this road map set out. The change owes much to the advocacy of Bohdan Krotevych. (Interfax-Ukraine, 5 June 2026)

1. Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, Resolution No. 1545, On the Exercise of Powers in the Field of Temporarily Occupied Territories, December 2024. ↑

2. Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, Resolution No. 1709, On Procedures for Establishing the Identity of Ukrainian Citizens Abroad, 2025. ↑

3. On the structural effect of institutional dispersal after the liquidation of the Ministry of Reintegration, see Tetiana Sydoruk, “Ukraine’s Reintegration Architecture: Institutional Gaps and Reform Priorities,” Ukrainian Analytical Digest, no. 47 (2025), pp. 12–16. ↑

4. United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU), Situation of Human Rights in Ukraine: 1 August–31 October 2024 (Geneva: Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2024), paras. 41–47. ↑

5. HRMMU, Situation of Human Rights in Ukraine: 1 February–31 July 2024 (Geneva: OHCHR, 2024), paras. 55–62. The reports are available at: ukraine.ohchr.org/en/reports. ↑

6. OHCHR, Treatment of Civilians Deprived of Their Liberty in the Context of the Armed Attack by the Russian Federation Against Ukraine (Geneva: United Nations, September 2025), p. 1, https://ukraine.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/2025-10/2025-09-22%20Treatment%20of%20civilians_ENG.pdf. ↑

7. HRMMU, Situation of Human Rights in Ukraine: 1 August–31 October 2024, paras. 52–58. See also HRMMU, Situation of Human Rights in Ukraine: 1 November 2023–31 January 2024 (Geneva: OHCHR, 2024), para. 39. ↑

8. HRMMU, Situation of Human Rights in Ukraine: 1 August–31 October 2024, para. 68; see also HRMMU, Situation of Human Rights in Ukraine: 1 May–31 July 2023 (Geneva: OHCHR, 2023), paras. 72–74 (noting denial of inheritance, pension, and property registration rights to those who refused Russian passports). ↑

9. UK Home Office, British National (Overseas) (BN(O)) Visa: Caseworker Guidance (London: Home Office, Version 7.0, March 2022); see also UK Visas and Immigration, Coronavirus (COVID-19): Guidance for UK Visa Applicants and Temporary UK Residents (London: Home Office, 2020–2021). On the documentary flexibility built into the scheme, see House of Commons Home Affairs Committee, The BN(O) Visa Route: Inquiry Report (London: House of Commons, 2022), paras. 24–27. ↑

10. For the biometric enrolment suspension and remote workarounds, see UK Visas and Immigration, Apply for a UK Visa from Hong Kong: Service Disruption Notice (London: UKVI, June 2020). The UKVCAS (UK Visa and Citizenship Application Services) system’s use of app-based facial recognition as a substitute for in-person enrolment was subsequently mainstreamed into UKVI procedures. ↑

11. e-Governance Academy (Tallinn), Ukraine–Estonia Digital Cooperation: e-Governance Roadmap 2023–2025 (Tallinn: eGA, 2023). On X-Road’s integration with Ukraine’s DIIA platform, see also Siim Sikkut, “Digital Identity for Displacement: Lessons from Estonia,” Journal of Cybersecurity 9, no. 1 (2023). ↑

12. Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (BAMF), Registrierung von Ukrainerinnen und Ukrainern: Vereinfachte Verfahren für Vertriebene ohne Gültige Dokumente (Nürnberg: BAMF, 2022); see also Deutscher Bundestag, Drucksache 20/1234: Fragen zur Erfassung ukrainischer Staatsangehöriger (Berlin: Bundestag, 2022). ↑

13. Council of the European Union, Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/382 Establishing the Existence of a Mass Influx of Displaced Persons from Ukraine, 4 March 2022, OJ L 71, 4.3.2022, p. 1. Article 8 of Council Directive 2001/55/EC (the Temporary Protection Directive) explicitly provides for alternative means of establishing identity where standard documentation is unavailable. ↑

14. European Commission, Guidance Note: Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of Council Implementing Decision 2022/382 (Brussels: European Commission, 2022), paras. 14–19. By March 2025, more than 6.7 million Ukrainians had been registered under temporary protection across EU member states. ↑