The Ministry of Internal Affairs reported on the first case of deprivation of citizenship of a convicted person. In fact, since 2017, more than a hundred such decisions have been made

Two Russian citizens were deprived of their acquired citizenship after being brought to criminal charges in a drug case. The press service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reports this.

A press release from the security forces states that during the check, the migration service identified “two visiting men,” one of whom had 19 packages of mephedrone, and the other — 1 package of a synthetic drug. Both were found guilty in a criminal case for drug trafficking (Part 2 of Article 228 of the Criminal Code). It is unknown which court made this decision.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs claims that this is the first case of deprivation of citizenship for a crime. Security forces refer to amendments to the law “On Citizenship”, which came into force in October 2023. Meanwhile, acquired Russian citizenship could have been deprived earlier; the April amendments only expanded the list of articles of the Criminal Code for which they can be subject to this.

The law on deprivation of citizenship for committing specific crimes was adopted back in 2017. Then this applied only to those involved in cases under “terrorist” and “extremist” articles.

Since then, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which was analyzed by Mediazona, more than a hundred people have been deprived of their citizenship. In 2019-2022 alone, 101 people were deprived of their citizenship; it was not possible to get acquainted with the statistics for previous years.

In April 2023, Vladimir Putin approved a new version of the law “On Citizenship”. According to it, the authorities can deprive acquired citizenship for criminal prosecution under dozens of articles. In particular, under articles on military “fakes” (Article 207.3 of the Criminal Code), “discrediting” the army (Article 280.3 of the Criminal Code), violation of the law on rallies (Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code), drug trafficking (Article 228 of the Criminal Code) and new articles on “threat national security.»

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