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The Czech Republic will require Russians to sever their ties to home before being naturalized
The Czech parliament has passed a law requiring Russians to renounce their citizenship before applying for citizenship of the Czech Republic. The vote came after a months-long campaign by one of the country’s ruling parties to portray Russians as “Putin’s dolls.”
The bill passed on Wednesday by 92 votes to 35, with 47 abstentions. It will now head to the Czech Senate and then to the desk of President Petr Pavel, a staunch critic of Moscow, who will sign it into law.
Once in force, the bill will require Russian passport holders seeking citizenship in the Czech Republic to first renounce their Russian citizenship, with some exemptions for children and asylum seekers. Russian officials will have to provide written proof that an applicant’s citizenship has been renounced before the process can proceed.
The bill will also freeze existing citizenship applications from Russian nationals indefinitely.
The bill was first proposed in September by Martin Exner, whose Mayors and Independents party is a member of the country’s ruling coalition. At the time, the party drew criticism for releasing a poster depicting Russians as Matryoshka dolls, with President Vladimir Putin lurking inside wearing the ‘Z’ symbol, which has become an icon of the Russian military.
The poster refers to Russians as “Putin’s nesting dolls,” claiming that they “abuse dual citizenship in the interests of Russia.”
Exner later claimed that the poster did not refer to all Russians, but only to “Russian agents.”
The Czech Republic is home to around 40,000 Russian citizens. According to the country’s Interior Ministry, Russians account for around a quarter of citizenship applicants, up from around a fifth before the Ukraine conflict escalated in 2022.
The bill follows similar anti-Russian legislation in the Baltic states. In Latvia – where a quarter of the population speaks Russian as a first language – thousands of Russians have been deported for refusing to take or failing a mandatory Latvian language test, while Soviet-era World War II monuments have been torn down and police have arrested dozens of people for celebrating the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany.
Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia have all restricted visas and residence permits for Russian citizens.
