PART 4 A YEAR AFTER: MAIN VIOLATIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN CRIMEA foreigners in Crimea. In order to obtain a residence permit or the RF passport, they were forced to prove the fact of their residence in Crimea through court actions. Not only a recourse to the court is associated with considerable costs, but it also cannot guarantee the obtaining of Russian citizenship or residence permit to these people. Even upon the availability of the court’s decision on establishing the fact of residence in Crimea or Sevastopol, the decision to issue the passport of the citizen of the Russian Federation /residence permit shall be adopted on the basis of a thor- ough check of all the circumstances of the case by o7 cials of the Federal Migration Service. The Russian authorities use the fact of ‘automatic citizenship’ for the criminal prose- cution of pro-Ukrainian activists. The most widely known examples are the cases of Oleg Sentsov and Aleksander Kolchenko, who were detained and taken to Moscow, where they are currently in the detention center. Both are citizens of Ukraine, and lived in Crimea at the time of the occupation. They did nothing to obtain the RF citizenship, and do not recognize the fact of obtaining this citizenship. However, the criminal proceedings against them are held as against the citizens of the RF; the Consul of Ukraine is not allowed to meet with them. The refusal of preservation of the Ukrainian citizenship is contrary to the laws of the Russian Federation, the legis- lation of Ukraine and international acts. At the same time, the Russian Federation manipulates the fact of acquisition of ‘au- tomatic citizenship’, e.g., for the actual expulsion of undesirable persons from the territory of the peninsula. Thus, regardless of the recognition by the Russian Fed- eration of all Crimeans as its citizens, Sinaver Kadyrov was forcibly deported from Crimea. The so-called Supreme Court of Crimea noted in its decision that there was no evidence that S. Kadyrov was a Russian citizen, and accordingly the court did not recognize his ‘automatic citizenship’. Such court decision indicates the lack of inde- pendence of the court (in fact, they make political decisions), and the non-compli- ance of the law on citizenship to the requirements of stability and justice, the focus on security and the protection of fundamental rights which are the basic principles of the law-governed state and the rule of law in the modern world. The European Convention on Nationality, ratiR ed by Ukraine, and signed, but not ratiR ed by the Russian Federation, deR nes the “nationality” as a legal bond between a person and a state without specifying the ethnic origin of a person. In addition, according to the position of the International Court of Justice in a decision (Notte- bohm case), nationality is a legal bond having as its basis a social fact of attachment, interests and sentiments, together with the existence of reciprocal rights and duties. Such ‘automatic’ obtaining of Russian citizenship by citizens of Ukraine in Crimea cannot be considered as legal, since the internal Russian procedures related to this 84