Putin’s Passportization Gambit: Investigating the logic behind Russia’s en masse naturalization of foreign citizens

Abstract

In an annual State of the Nation address in 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the collapse of the USSR “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”25 Since then, he seems to have figured out a ‘new’ and ‘cunning’ way to put the humpty
dumpty together again. With a new and brilliant trick up his sleeve – passportization, his expansionist tendencies towards his neighbors have started to come to light. This article attempts to explain this new ploy and the problems it causes to the post-Soviet
states and the international community as a whole.

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