This dataset contains five Excel files with monthly and quarterly longitudinal data on the naturalization of foreigners and passport issuance collected from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), with a specific focus on Ukrainians.
The goal of the data collection is to contribute to our understanding of the extent of Russia's passportization and forced naturalization of Ukrainians in the wake of the occupation and annexation of Ukrainian territory since 2014.
This first Excel file contains the absolute number of naturalizations in Russia (in total and of Ukrainians) in the post-Soviet period from 1992 to 2022 and six months in 2023. In addition to the MVD data covering the period 2016 to 2023, the first file has been enriched with other secondary data sources taken from an academic paper from 2014 by Olga Chudinovskikh on amendments to Russia's citizenship laws and the effect on the naturalization of foreigners, and a media report from DW on the easing of naturalization rules for Ukrainians adopted in 2017. The other four files cover the period from 2016 to 2023 with data solely extracted from the MVD files. The second Excel file containts the total number of naturalizations per month in Russia between May 2016 and June 2023. The third Excel file containts the share of naturalized Ukrainians of the total number of naturalized person in Russia between the third quarter in 2016 and the second quarter in 2023 (structured as quarterly aggregated data). The fourth Excel file contains the absolute number of naturalizations in selected Russian regions, and annexed Crimea and Sevastopol, between quarter 4 in 2016 and the second quarter in 2023 (structured as quarterly aggregated data). The fifth Excel file contains the absolute number of issued passports in Russia between May 2016 and June 2023 (both domestic and foreign travel IDs, monthly data). Apart from the country of origin, the publicly available MVD statistics do not provide any further information about naturalized individuals or about those receiving a passport. The data compilation contained in the Excel files primarily focuses on Ukrainians. The entire dataset is described in detail in a separate Word file. Since only a small part of the data contained in the spreadsheets downloaded from the MVD website was extracted for this collection, the original files are also included in a zip file.