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During President Putin’s live call-in show on December 19, Oleg Kozlov described the difficulties he experienced trying to receive Russian citizenship. The President promised to settle the matter within a week.

“It is troubling to hear that you still have not been given Russian citizenship. I think it is intolerable. If a Hero of Russia wants to be a Russian citizen and is not one, that, of course, is unacceptable,” the President said during his live TV show.

Viktor Ivanov, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office, reported that the question of citizenship for military personnel of the Russian army would be decided in the very near future. At a meeting of the Presidential Commission for Citizenship Issues, Mr Ivanov said that the Commission jointly with the Defence Ministry had worked out a procedure to decide the matter quickly and in a simplified manner.

Mr Ivanov said the appeal from Warrant Officer Kozlov was not an isolated case – the issue dated back a long time and was unconnected with the new law on citizenship. Mr Ivanov recalled that in the 1990s, when the matter of citizenship was decided by inserting a special paper slip into one’s passport, military personnel could not have such an insert because they did not have passports.