Ukraine

Ukrainian citizenship law is governed by the Law of Ukraine "On Citizenship of Ukraine" No. 2235-III of 18 January 2001, most recently amended with effect from 16 January 2026 by Law No. 4502-IX of 18 June 2025 (the "multiple citizenship" reform) and further adjusted by Law No. 4730-IX of 17 December 2025 (consolidated edition of 10 May 2026). For people with Ukrainian roots the central route is acquisition by territorial origin under Article 8, which has two limbs with different lists of qualifying relatives. Under the first limb the applicant qualifies if they themselves, or at least one of their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, full or half siblings, children or grandchildren, was born or permanently resided before 24 August 1991 on the territory that became the territory of Ukraine under the Law "On the Legal Succession of Ukraine" No. 1543-XII of 12 September 1991. Under the second limb, which covers the earlier Ukrainian state formations named in the law (see Historical Citizenship Rules), the qualifying relatives are only the applicant, a parent, a grandparent, a great-grandparent or a full or half sibling — children and grandchildren of the applicant do not count. This is a registration-type procedure, not naturalisation: no residence in Ukraine, immigration permit or presidential decree is required, and citizenship dates from the decision of the authorised body.

Three further routes matter. First, citizenship by birth under Article 7: a person at least one of whose parents was a Ukrainian citizen at the moment of their birth is a citizen of Ukraine from birth, regardless of place of birth — for such people the task is confirmation and documentation of an existing citizenship, not acquisition. Second, renewal (re-acquisition) under Article 10 for former Ukrainian citizens: a former citizen who is stateless is registered as a citizen on application wherever they live; a former citizen who holds another nationality must have returned to Ukraine for permanent residence. Third, facilitated naturalisation under Article 9 for persons of Ukrainian descent who do not fit Article 8: holders of "overseas Ukrainian" status under Law No. 1582-IV of 4 March 2004 immigrate outside the annual quota and need one last year of continuous residence from the grant of the immigration permit instead of five, provided they have held the status for at least a year. Article 10-1, inserted by the 2026 reform, governs the simplified procedure for citizens of states on the Cabinet of Ministers list.

Since 16 January 2026 an applicant by territorial origin must, under Article 8 part 3, attest recognition and observance of the Constitution and laws of Ukraine in the application itself and satisfy three examination requirements — command of the Ukrainian language at the level set by the National Commission on State Language Standards, the basics of the Constitution of Ukraine, and the history of Ukraine. Children, persons judicially declared incapable, persons with disability related to sight, hearing or speech impairment and persons with a medically confirmed mental disorder are exempt from the examinations. Article 8 part 7 imports the bars in Article 9 part 8: a person convicted in Ukraine of a grave or especially grave crime is excluded until the conviction is spent or lifted, and then only having regard to the level of threat to national security; a person who committed acts abroad classified as a grave or especially grave crime by the Criminal Code of Ukraine is excluded; and so is a person whose unlawful conduct creates or created a threat to Ukraine's national security. Article 8 part 7 adds a fourth bar of its own: a person whose earlier acquisition decision was cancelled under Article 21.

Article 8 fixes the generational depth explicitly: the anchor may be the applicant personally or a parent, grandparent or great-grandparent, as well as a full or half sibling and — for the "territory of Ukraine" limb only — a child or grandchild of the applicant. Great-grandparents were added by Law No. 1941-IX of 14 December 2021. An applicant's own anchor may not be more remote than a great-grandparent, although, because the children of a qualifying person acquire a right of their own (below), a family claim can in practice reach one generation further down. The anchor person must have been born, or have permanently resided, on qualifying territory before 24 August 1991 — the date of Ukraine's declaration of independence.

Critically, no unbroken chain of citizenship transmission is required, because the claim does not depend on the ancestor ever having held Ukrainian (or Soviet) citizenship. What must be proven is (a) the ancestor's birth or permanent residence on qualifying territory before the cut-off date, and (b) the family link between the applicant and that ancestor, generation by generation, through civil-status records. An ancestor's later emigration, loss of Soviet citizenship or naturalisation elsewhere does not break the claim. A claim through a grandparent or great-grandparent therefore works as an archival exercise: obtain the ancestor's birth record or an archival certificate of residence, then connect it to the applicant through birth and marriage certificates, including documents evidencing any changes of surname.

Article 8 part 1 closes by giving the children of a qualifying person a right to acquire citizenship by territorial origin. Until 16 January 2026 that clause was limited to minor children; Law No. 4502-IX deleted the word "minor", so adult children now hold the same derivative right. Nothing about it is automatic: a separate application, a separate decision and a separate certificate are required for each child, an application for a child is filed by a parent or legal representative, and from the age of 14 the child must consent and, as a rule, attend in person. Descent under Article 7 operates differently: it is unlimited in generational depth in principle, but each link must actually have held Ukrainian citizenship at the next child's birth, which confines it to families in which every generation already held Ukrainian citizenship at the relevant birth — most often, but not only, families present in Ukraine at independence.

A separate Ukrainian citizenship did not exist in operative terms before 1991. The short-lived independent formations of 1917-1921 — the Ukrainian People's Republic (UNR), the Ukrainian State (the Hetmanate of 1918) and the West Ukrainian People's Republic (ZUNR) — enacted their own citizenship legislation, but these states were extinguished by Soviet and Polish control. From the founding of the USSR in December 1922 until 1991, residents of Soviet Ukraine held USSR citizenship under a succession of union instruments issued between 1924 and 1990, within which republican citizenship of the Ukrainian SSR existed only nominally. Ukraine's current law resolves this discontinuity territorially rather than through ancestral citizenship: alongside the territory that became Ukraine in 1991, Article 8 names the territories that at the relevant time formed part of the UNR, the ZUNR, the Ukrainian State, the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (the republic's official name until its new constitution of January 1937), Zakarpattia (Transcarpathian) Ukraine, the Ukrainian SSR, the Crimean People's Republic and the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. The two Crimean entities were added with effect from 16 January 2026 and are of different character: the Crimean People's Republic was proclaimed by the Kurultai of the Crimean Tatars in December 1917 and destroyed by the Bolsheviks weeks later, while the Crimean ASSR of 1921-1945 was Soviet but lay within the RSFSR rather than Soviet Ukraine, which is why the statute has to name it separately.

The division of labour between the two limbs is often misunderstood. The first limb is purely geographic and has no temporal qualifier on the territory itself: it already reaches everything inside today's borders, including Eastern Galicia, Volhynia, Northern Bukovina, Southern Bessarabia and Transcarpathia in the periods when they were Polish, Romanian, Czechoslovak or Hungarian, so an ancestor born in Lviv in 1930 qualifies without invoking the ZUNR. The second limb adds territory that is not in Ukraine today but formed part of a named formation at the moment of the ancestor's birth or during his/her permanent residence — for example the Kholm and Podlachia regions, Lemkivshchyna and the Przemyśl area in present-day Poland.

The initial body of citizens was defined by the first citizenship law, Law No. 1636-XII of 8 October 1991 (in force 13 November 1991): everyone resident in Ukraine when it entered into force who was not a citizen of another state and did not object became a Ukrainian citizen by operation of law (the "zero option"), and persons abroad on state or military service or study could opt in within a year. The amendments of 16 April 1997 (Law No. 210/97-VR) added two further limbs: all citizens of the former USSR permanently resident on Ukrainian territory on 24 August 1991, which survives today as Article 3(1) point 1 of the 2001 Law; and persons born or permanently resident in Ukraine, and their children and grandchildren, who on 13 November 1991 lived outside Ukraine and held no other citizenship, on application originally by 31 December 1999 and, after Law No. 1614-III of 23 March 2000, by 31 December 2004 — that last route lapsed when the 1991 Law was repealed on 1 March 2001 and was not carried into Article 3 of the 2001 Law. The 2001 law created the standing territorial-origin route of Article 8, progressively broadened in 2005 (Law No. 2663-IV: the cut-off moved from 16 July 1990 to 24 August 1991, half siblings, children and grandchildren were added to the full siblings already covered, and the two limbs were separated), 2021 (Law No. 1941-IX: great-grandparents) and 2026 (Law No. 4502-IX: the Crimean formations, an express cut-off date in the second limb, declarations, examinations and children of any age). Because eligibility turns on territory and family links rather than on an ancestor's citizenship status, the gender asymmetries found in many European nationality laws play no role: a maternal-line great-grandmother born in the Ukrainian SSR qualifies exactly as a paternal-line great-grandfather does.

Historical loss of Soviet citizenship by an emigrant ancestor — through the Soviet denaturalisation decrees of the 1920s, the 1938 USSR citizenship law, individual deprivation or simple emigration — does not affect a descendant's Article 8 claim, since the ancestor's citizenship is not an element of the claim. What can interrupt a claim today is different: under Article 21 a decision registering acquisition of citizenship is cancelled if it was obtained through false information, forged or insufficient documents, deception or concealment of a material fact, or through failure to honour an undertaking to terminate a foreign citizenship, a declaration, or the undertaking to sit the examinations.

For current citizens, Article 17 provides three ways citizenship ends: renunciation (Article 18), loss (Article 19), and grounds provided by Ukraine's international treaties. Renunciation and loss both take effect only on the date of the corresponding presidential decree — nothing operates automatically. Renunciation is open to citizens permanently resident abroad and, since 16 January 2026, to a citizen who simultaneously holds the citizenship of a state on the simplified-procedure list, who may apply in that state regardless of where they live; it is barred where the person has been notified of suspicion of a criminal offence in Ukraine or is subject to an enforceable conviction there. The loss grounds in force since 16 January 2026 are: (1) voluntary acquisition, as an adult, of the citizenship of a state recognised by the Verkhovna Rada as an aggressor or occupier state, or of a state whose citizens cannot acquire Ukrainian citizenship under the simplified procedure; (2) acquisition under Article 9 through false information, forged documents, concealment, deception, or breach of a renunciation undertaking, a declaration or the examination undertaking; (3) contract military service in an aggressor or occupier state; (4) an enforceable conviction for crimes against the fundamentals of national security, against peace and humanity, terrorism, terrorist financing or organised-crime offences; and (5) participation in the armed aggression against Ukraine or in the Russian occupation administration in temporarily occupied territory.

Two qualifications matter. Citizenship of an aggressor state acquired on temporarily occupied territory, or by a Ukrainian citizen unlawfully deported from it, is expressly deemed non-voluntary, as are the multiple-citizenship cases recognised in Article 5-1 points 1 to 4; and acquiring the citizenship of a listed state is no longer a loss ground at all. The anti-statelessness safeguard, however, is not general: Article 19 disapplies only grounds 1 and 3 to 5 where the person would be left stateless. Ground 2 — fraud in an Article 9 naturalisation, or breach of an undertaking or declaration — is deliberately excluded, so deprivation on that ground can leave a person stateless.

Ukraine has no restitution scheme of the German or Austrian type for victims of Nazi or Soviet persecution; the territorial-origin route itself functions as the de facto reparative mechanism, since it reaches descendants of everyone who left or was deported from the territory before 24 August 1991, without any requirement that the ancestor held or lost citizenship. There is likewise no purely ethnic route: the status of "overseas Ukrainian" (zakordonnyi ukrainets) under Law No. 1582-IV of 4 March 2004, granted on proof of Ukrainian ethnic origin or origin from Ukraine, does not confer citizenship but gives quota-free immigration and the one-year residence track to naturalisation.

Children born abroad to a Ukrainian parent are citizens from the moment of birth, with no registration deadline and no risk of forfeiture through late registration; the acquisition is documented through the State Migration Service or a Ukrainian embassy or consulate. Under Article 7 as restated on 16 January 2026, no application is needed where at birth both parents were Ukrainian citizens or one parent was a Ukrainian citizen and the other stateless; in every other case an application is filed by a parent or legal representative, and by the person themselves after majority. Other notable exceptions: a person born on Ukrainian territory after 24 August 1991 to permanently resident foreigners may use the territorial-origin route under Article 8 part 2; contract servicemembers of the Armed Forces, the State Special Transport Service and the National Guard, and holders of a temporary residence permit issued under parts 20 or 24 of Article 4 of the Law "On the Legal Status of Foreigners and Stateless Persons", may defer the three examinations by written undertaking under Article 8 part 5, while Article 9 separately shortens the residence period for contract servicemembers rather than waiving it; and a citizen of an aggressor state who suffered politically motivated persecution there is among the categories that file a declaration of renunciation instead of an undertaking to terminate under Article 10-1. Applications filed before 16 January 2026 are decided under the previous rules, and certain categories, chiefly military personnel and their families, had a six-month window from that date to replace an outstanding renunciation undertaking with a declaration.

Ukraine historically demanded renunciation from all applicants and treated voluntary acquisition of another citizenship as a loss ground, though loss was rarely enforced. Law No. 4502-IX of 18 June 2025, in force since 16 January 2026, changed the model: new Article 5-1 recognises six cases of multiple citizenship — acquisition of another citizenship at birth; acquisition by an adopted child through foreign adopters; automatic acquisition through marriage; automatic acquisition by an adult by operation of foreign law, provided the person has not obtained a document confirming that citizenship; acquisition of Ukrainian citizenship under the simplified procedure of Article 10-1; and acquisition by a Ukrainian citizen of the citizenship of a state on the simplified-procedure list. Under Article 10-1 part 2 the Cabinet composes that list having regard to a state's EU membership and its application of restrictive measures in connection with the armed aggression against Ukraine. The list was first approved by Cabinet Resolution No. 1412 of 5 November 2025 with five states (the United States, Canada, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic), restated by Resolution No. 589 of 8 May 2026 and extended by Resolution No. 826 of 24 June 2026, which inserted the Republic of Moldova after Malta with effect from 30 June 2026. As at 22 August 2026 it comprises 34 states: all 27 EU member states plus the United Kingdom, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, the United States, Canada and Moldova. The list has been amended twice in nine months and should be checked in its current consolidated version before it is relied on.

An applicant by territorial origin who is a citizen of a listed state renounces nothing: among the four documents Article 8 part 8 allows to accompany the application, such a person files the "declaration on recognising oneself a citizen of Ukraine", confirming that in legal relations with Ukraine they will be treated exclusively as a Ukrainian citizen. That caveat has teeth — a dual citizen in Ukraine is subject to Ukrainian law in full, including military obligations. A citizen of a non-listed state instead files an undertaking to terminate the foreign citizenship and must produce proof of termination within two years of acquiring Ukrainian citizenship. Russia is not on the list, so Russian citizenship alone gives no simplified access and cannot be retained; but Article 10-1 part 3 expressly allows a person who holds a listed state's citizenship as well as Russian or other non-listed citizenship to use the simplified route, filing the declaration for the listed citizenship together with an undertaking to terminate the others. Voluntary acquisition of Russian or non-listed citizenship by an existing Ukrainian citizen remains a loss ground. Commentators note an unresolved tension with Article 4 of the Constitution ("there is single citizenship in Ukraine"), which the law finesses by recognising cases of multiple citizenship rather than proclaiming it; the new regime is nonetheless being applied.

An Article 8 applicant must document two things: the anchor fact and the family chain. The anchor fact — birth or permanent residence on qualifying territory before 24 August 1991 — is proven by the ancestor's birth certificate, an extract from civil-status registers, or an archival certificate of residence, from Ukrainian state regional archives or civil-registry archives and, for territories now outside Ukraine, from Polish, Romanian or other successor-state archives. The family chain is proven by the sequence of birth certificates from ancestor to applicant, with marriage certificates or other records evidencing each change of surname.

The applicant additionally submits a valid passport or statelessness document, proof of lawful presence in Ukraine or of permanent residence abroad, photographs, the applicable declaration or renunciation undertaking, and a document from the state of citizenship and, if different, of permanent residence confirming that the person has not committed acts classified as a grave or especially grave crime by the Criminal Code of Ukraine; such documents are valid for the period stated in them, or for three months from issue where no period is stated (in the United States this is in practice the FBI Identity History Summary). Adults also submit the state language certificate and the certificate of the Constitution and history examinations, or medical documents establishing an exemption. Foreign-issued documents must be legalised or apostilled — Ukraine has been a party to the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention since 22 December 2003, and some bilateral and legal-assistance treaties dispense with legalisation altogether — and must be submitted with a Ukrainian translation whose accuracy is notarially certified. For Article 7 confirmation cases the evidence is simpler: the child's birth certificate and proof that a parent held Ukrainian citizenship at the time of the birth.

Inside Ukraine, applications by territorial origin, by birth and for renewal are filed in person with the territorial subdivision of the State Migration Service of Ukraine (DMS); abroad, with the Ukrainian embassy or consulate at the applicant's place of permanent residence or stay. The procedure is governed, alongside the law, by the Procedure approved by Presidential Decree No. 215/2001 of 27 March 2001, restated in a new edition by Decree No. 110/2026 of 11 February 2026 (in force from 13 February 2026) to implement the reform. An application for a child is filed by a parent or legal representative; from age 14 the child must consent and, as a rule, be present. There is no oath of citizenship.

The sequence for a territorial-origin applicant since 16 January 2026 is: (1) sit the examinations unless exempt — the state language examination through the online examination system of the National Commission on State Language Standards, which requires authentication through the state electronic identification service and yields a state certificate of unlimited duration, and the examinations on the basics of the Constitution of Ukraine and the history of Ukraine, which are administered by the state institution "Scientific and Methodological Centre of Higher and Professional Pre-Higher Education" designated by Cabinet of Ministers Resolution No. 620 of 30 May 2024, with the official state citizenship portal as the single site for registration and payment; (2) assemble the origin and civil-status documents; (3) file the application with the declaration or undertaking and supporting documents at the DMS subdivision or the consular post; (4) on a positive decision, receive the certificate of registration as a citizen of Ukraine (dovidka pro reiestratsiiu osoby hromadianynom Ukrainy), the document on which the passport application is then made and which may be re-issued on written application if needed; (5) apply on that basis for the passport of a citizen of Ukraine (ID card) or the passport for travel abroad.

Decisions on acquisition under Articles 7, 8, 10 and 10-1 are taken by the head of the DMS territorial body or of the consular post; only naturalisation under Article 9 and termination of citizenship require a presidential decree. Applicants who filed a renunciation undertaking are documented with a temporary certificate of a citizen of Ukraine pending proof of termination. Where documents are not in order they are returned with a notice rather than refused outright, and a refusal follows only if the defects are not cured and the documents resubmitted within two months; a refusal must state its grounds and is open to administrative and judicial challenge. A martial-law practicality: consular posts require male Ukrainian citizens aged 18 to 60 living or staying abroad to produce an electronic military-registration document for most consular services, and men who acquire citizenship become subject to military-service obligations.

The decision deadlines differ by filing place. A DMS territorial body must decide an acquisition application within three months of the application being accepted, and within 20 working days where the ground is birth under Article 7. An embassy or consulate — the route most descent applicants use — must decide within six months of receiving the documents. Naturalisation under Article 9, which goes to the President, may take up to eight months. The examination requirement makes the overall timeline hard to predict and, being new since 16 January 2026, largely untested: the Constitution and history examinations are held on a limited number of published session dates (twelve in 2026), either examination may be re-sat no more than once every four months, and archival records from Ukrainian, Polish or Romanian archives take their own time to obtain in wartime.

Official fees only (converted at approximately UAH 48 and USD 1.16 to the euro):

• Acquisition by territorial origin in Ukraine: free of charge — no state fee for the application or for a temporary citizen's certificate; the certificate of registration as a citizen costs UAH 137.75 (about EUR 3).
• At consulates the consular tariff applies, with base rates in US dollars charged in local currency: acquisition by territorial origin USD 80 (about EUR 69), and separately for each child; renewal in citizenship USD 150 (about EUR 129); establishing belonging to citizenship USD 80; a certificate of belonging or non-belonging USD 20 (about EUR 17); renunciation of citizenship USD 300 (about EUR 259). The tariff contains no line for acquisition by birth.
• Examinations: the language examination for foreigners and stateless persons costs three subsistence minimums for able-bodied persons as at 1 January, recalculated annually — UAH 9,984 (about EUR 208) in 2026 — paid into the general fund of the state budget on the National Commission's published requisites. The examinations on the basics of the Constitution and the history of Ukraine are covered by a single further payment of UAH 9,984 (about EUR 208) made through the official state citizenship portal; a re-sit of either of them costs one and a half subsistence minimums, UAH 4,992 (about EUR 104).
• Passports: in Ukraine the biometric passport for travel abroad costs UAH 1,147 (about EUR 24) in the standard 20-working-day procedure and UAH 1,787 (about EUR 37) for issuance within 7 working days; at consulates, passport issuance costs USD 90 plus USD 40 for automated data processing (about EUR 112 in total), charged in local currency.

This page is not updated regularly, and it may not reflect the current position. It is a general account of Ukrainian citizenship law: statutes are amended, time limits expire, and the practice of the competent authorities moves without the legislation moving with it. Nothing here is legal advice, and nothing here is an assessment of your own family’s position.

Whether there is a claim in your case turns on names, dates and documents that no general page can take into account. The questionnaire is where we ask about them, and a lawyer in our citizenship team reads the answers.