Ukrainian citizenship by descent

The so-called “simplified procedure” for obtaining citizenship is the registration of citizenship by territorial origin (Article 8 of the Law of Ukraine “On Citizenship of Ukraine”).

You can familiarize yourself with the procedure, order, and nuances of the “simplified” procedure of citizenship on this page.

According to its definition, repatriation is the return to the Motherland of persons who during the war found themselves outside the borders of their country and stayed outside it for a long time. Currently, there is no such or similar procedure in Ukraine, including for the descendants of Ukrainians who went abroad.

However, if your relatives are no further than great-grandmother or great-grandfather in terms of the degree of kinship, were born or permanently lived in the territory that became the territory of Ukraine, you have the right to acquire citizenship by territorial origin.

Before making a decision to apply for citizenship, keep in mind that in order to obtain a Ukrainian passport, you will definitely have to give up all your existing citizenships. If you do not want to keep your foreign citizenship, we recommend that you pay attention to the immigration procedure and issue a permanent residence permit.

If you were born during the times of the USSR in the territory that became the territory of Ukraine, you have the right to submit documents for registration of citizenship.

Before submitting the documents, we recommend obtaining an extract from the register of birth certificates (we can do this for you) to check whether all the information in the register is correct.

You can also get a duplicate birth certificate. In this way, you will update the information in the register, your documents will be issued by a Ukrainian state body and written in Ukrainian, which will significantly speed up the process of their consideration. In the future, if necessary, it will be possible to put an apostille on such a certificate.

If your mother or father was born on the territory of Ukraine, you have the right to acquire Ukrainian citizenship by territorial origin.

In order to submit documents for registration of citizenship, we recommend first checking whether there is a record of the birth of the mother and father in the archives or civil status registration body. We can do it for you. If the record of birth has been preserved and there are no remarks on it, then you can submit documents.

Citizenship of Ukraine by descent grandparent is citizenship by territorial origin.

The first step is to collect all the documents that will confirm your family connection with your grandmother or grandfather. These can be certificates of birth, name change, marriage, etc.

It is also important to have a document confirming the birth of a grandparent on the territory that became the territory of Ukraine.

If this document is of an old model or is missing at all, we recommend that you make a request to the archive or сivil status registration body (depending on how many years have passed since the birth) to check whether the birth record has been preserved. We can do it for you.

If the record of birth has been preserved and there are no remarks on it, then you can submit documents for obtaining citizenship.

Yes, in order to get Ukrainian passports, you must first give up of all your current citizenships.

The exception is cases when there is an international agreement between Ukraine and the state of which the applicant is a citizen, which provides for a change of citizenship simultaneously with the acquisition of Ukrainian citizenship (for example, Belarus and Kazakhstan). In these cases, it is not necessary to go through the procedure of renunciation of citizenship, the Migration Service notifies the diplomatic institution of the country of previous citizenship about the acquisition of Ukrainian citizenship and sends passports to it independently.

Also, citizens of countries in which there is no procedure for terminating citizenship can simply hand in their passports, because it is physically impossible for them to fully relinquish citizenship.

In all other cases, termination of previous citizenships is mandatory.

The norm, which made it possible to avoid full exit from citizenship, if the state payment for termination exceeds half of the minimum wage in Ukraine, no longer exists. Therefore, in such cases, it is no longer possible to simply hand over the passport.