Putin's ultimatum to Ukrainians; legalise immigration status or leave Russia by September 10

Moscow [Russia], March 21 (ANI): Russian President Vladimir Putin has given another ultimatum to Ukrainians living in the country by ordering them to legalise their immigration status or leave by September 10, Moscow Times reported quoting a presidential decree published on Thursday.

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The decree stated that Ukrainians without "legal grounds to stay or reside in Russia" must leave Russia or obtain citizenship within the next six months and 10 days.

As reported by The Moscow Times, the orders apply to Ukrainian passport holders from four partially occupied regions -- Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Russia claims to have annexed these regions in 2022.

The order also applies to the residents of Crimea which Russia claimed to have seized in 2014.

Russian authorities have pressurised the Ukrainians of these occupied authorities to take citizenships in recent years. Putin has claimed that the government had "virtually completed" the mass issuance of Russian passports in those regions last year, The Moscow Times reported.

Meanwhile, Ukraine have condemned Russia's "passportisation" deeming it to be "illegal and a "gross violation of Ukraine's sovereignty." Western governments have also criticised this move while EU has decided to not recognize the passports as valid travel documents, The Moscow Times reported.

Meanwhile, the efforts to reach an agreement on the ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine continue with US President Donald Trump announcing on Wednesday that he had a "very good" one-hour phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Trump also held talks with Russian leader Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.

Moreover, The ceasefire talks are set to begin in Jeddah on Sunday with US expecting Ukraine to support agreements reached during a recent phone conversation between Putin and Trump, according to Trump's Special Envoy Steven Witkoff, TASS Russian News Agency reported.

In an interview with Fox News, Witkoff described his discussions with Putin, saying, "I had two meetings with President Putin. The first one was for somewhere close to three and a half hours, and the second one was close to four hours."

He continued, "They were both compelling. I thought we accomplished quite a bit, and in the second meeting, we actually really narrowed the issues, certainly from the Russian standpoint, we were immediately in discussions on tangible, granular ways to move forward towards a ceasefire that included what you've heard about today, which is the ceasefire with regard to energy infrastructure from both sides, something they've been trying to put together for quite some time." (ANI)

(The story has come from a syndicated feed and has not been edited by the Tribune Staff.)