THE PROBLEM OF STATELESSNESS IN UKRAINE AND THE WAYS OF ADDRESSING IT succession), migration, conflicts between laws of various states, etc. As regards the situation in Ukraine, statelessness here results from the non-acquisition of citizenship of one of the newly formed states after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, lack of any government program for the documentation of population of the occupied territories of Ukraine, discrimination against the Roma and national minorities, an absence or imperfect procedure and administrative barriers for the acquisition or confirmation of citizenship by persons who have no identity documents. The current reality is as follows: instead of adopting assistance programs for stateless persons to help them determine their status or acquire citizenship of the country of their permanent residence, Ukrainian laws impose penalties on them for the uncertain legal situation they are trapped in, often through no fault of their own. Consequences What is it like living in Ukraine as a stateless person? Stateless persons, just like persons at risk of statelessness, are one of the most vulnerable categories of Ukraine’s population, especially when undocumented. Living in a country with complicated administrative procedures and being unable to receive identity documents, they are actually deprived of any opportunity of exercising their civil, economic and political rights and freedoms. For example, adults without a passport, even if they were born and lived in Ukraine all their lives, can be administratively detained at any time for violation of the established legislation dictating stay in Ukraine only because they live without documents that they are just not able to obtain. Absence of documents makes it difficult or even impossible for such persons to get official employment or access medical services, education, ownership rights, the right to protect their rights and freedoms in courts, and even the parental right. For example, when one or both the parents of a child have no documents, it can result in the so-called “bureaucratic orphanage” when the child’s birth certificate has a dash in the field “mother”. Another example is when the field “father” is filled in according to the mother if she has an identity document but the father does not. In this case, the child is regarded as being brought up by a single mother. The situation is aggravated by the fact that Ukraine still has no procedure for identification of stateless persons, which deprives them of any opportunity of confirming their statelessness and regularizing their stay in a legal way. Stateless persons are in a legal vacuum, consigned to be invisible people, just non-existent from a legal point of view. Unfortunately, this list of difficulties that stateless persons in Ukraine encounter every day is not exhaustive. 8