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#Ukraine to jail #people over Russian passports

A law proposed by the government in Kiev on Friday would see some Ukrainians who obtain Russian passports punished with lengthy prison terms. Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk insisted the measure is not aimed at ordinary Ukrainians, but officials who work with the “enemy state.”

The draft calls for a sentence of 10-15 years for any local or regional government employees who accept an “enemy” passport. Engaging in “propaganda for an enemy state” would carry a sentence of 5-8 years, while “compelling” Ukrainian citizens to accept an “enemy” passport would be punishable by 8-12 years behind bars.

Any Russian citizens engaging in “illegal passportization on the territory of Ukraine” would also be subject to these penalties, said Vereshchuk, whose portfolio is “reintegration of the temporarily occupied territories.”

She added that this type of law “should have been passed in 2014.” After the US-backed coup in Kiev in February that year, Crimea voted to rejoin Russia, while the Donbass regions of Donetsk and Lugansk declared independence. Kiev brutally suppressed protests in the Kharkov and Odessa regions, while sending the army into Donbass.

Zelensky aide says civilian officials are 'legitimate targets' READ MORE: Zelensky aide says civilian officials are 'legitimate targets'
Ukraine has been working on the draft since July, after blasting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to implement a fast-track citizenship procedure for any citizen of Ukraine. Many residents of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions have since availed themselves of the opportunity.

Earlier this month, Vereshchuk threatened anyone who would organize or participate in a vote to join Russia in the “occupied territories” with up to 12 years in prison and a confiscation of property, under the existing “collaboration” statute.

Last week, after Ukrainian troops moved into several cities in the Kharkov Region, following a “redeployment” of Russian forces, Vereshchuk announced that any teachers who had used the Russian curriculum would also face criminal charges. Meanwhile, Ukrainian state police said that “a reckoning” was coming for any civilians suspected of “collaboration” and set up “filtration” operations in the northeastern region.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/562976

Zelensky aide says #civilian officials are 'legitimate #targets'

The government in Kiev was behind deadly shelling in Kherson and it also organized the murder of two civilian officials in Berdyansk on Friday, Mikhail Podoliak, an aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, has confirmed.

However, Podoliak insisted these were not acts of terrorism but legitimate strikes against purely military targets.

“Everything that happened in Berdyansk, in Melitopol, in Kherson — those are all absolutely legitimate military targets. Those are certainly not terrorist or, strictly speaking, criminal acts,” Podoliak said.

At least three people were killed and 13 were wounded on Friday morning when five missiles from the US-supplied HIMARS launchers struck the administration building in Kherson, which is under Russian control. Most of them were civilian passers-by, local authorities said.

Kirill Stremousov, the deputy chair of the military-civilian administration, says the strike was intended to take him out. He survived only by chance, having accepted an invitation to appear in a TV talk show at the time of the shelling.

In Berdyansk, in the Russian-controlled part of the Zaporozhye Region, two officials of the local military-civilian administration were murdered on Friday morning. Oleg Boyko was in charge of housing and utilities, while his wife Lyudmila headed the local elections commission.

Casualties from Ukrainian shelling of Kherson revealed READ MORE: Casualties from Ukrainian shelling of Kherson revealed
An explosion that could be heard in Melitopol on Friday was a controlled demolition of unexploded ordnance, local official Vladimir Rogov said. However, the city headquarters of the organization ‘Together With Russia’ was damaged by a bomb last week.

Podoliak did not take credit for the assassination of the Lugansk People’s Republic head prosecutor Sergey Gorenko and his assistant Yekaterina Steglenko. They were killed on Friday when an improvised bomb detonated at the Prosecutor General’s Office in Lugansk. Assassinations by Ukrainian agents have claimed the lives of a number of Donetsk and Lugansk officials over the past seven years.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that Ukraine has engaged in “terrorist attacks” against civilians and infrastructure, including attempts to damage nuclear facilities inside Russia. This behavior was unacceptable, he said, and if Kiev persists it will receive a “more serious” response from Moscow than a handful of “sensitive strikes” that damaged power stations and dams this week.