THE PROBLEM OF STATELESSNESS IN UKRAINE AND THE WAYS OF ADDRESSING IT in Ukraine, Article 9(3) of this Law requires a three-year period of continuous residence. Besides, Article 7 of the amended law grants automatic citizenship of Ukraine to children who were born in the country to persons granted refugee status in Ukraine, irrespective of whether the child acquired the nationality of one of the parents or not. . Prior to that, the legislation on refugees underwent several reforms, and numerous reforms were going on in the field of migration by means of dissolving, restructuring or establishment of new bodies with competence in migration matters. Documents confirming the refugee status were issued for different terms (at different times, the refugee status and the refugee card were granted for 3 months, 1 year, or 5 years). Permanent changes in the validity terms of refugee documents made the procedure of prolonging such documents more complicated for the refugees and resulted in growth of persons, staying in Ukraine with no legal basis and decrease of the number of refugees who have been naturalized in Ukraine in recent years. For comparison: 253 foreigners and stateless persons granted refugee status in Ukraine were admitted to citizenship of Ukraine in 2004 alone, whereas the figure for 2008-2012 was 270. It confirms a negative trend in acquisition of Ukrainian citizenship by refugees. In the opinion of Valentyna Subotenko, national expert on statelessness, enforcement of the citizenship legislation is another reason of statelessness. In particular, when an application lodged by a person granted refugee status in Ukraine is examined, legality of granting refugee status is verified, though such verification is not provided for by the “Procedure for proceedings on applications and claims concerning citizenship of Ukraine and for execution of decisions made”. This verification considerably complicates and slows down the procedure of admitting refugees to citizenship of Ukraine, thereby narrowing the range of rights and freedoms of the already vulnerable category of the Ukrainian population. III. 5 Representatives of Roma community in Ukraine The situation of the Roma minority is specific: an overwhelming majority of the Roma, even having lived all their life on the territory of Ukraine, have found themselves in circumstances where the fact of their citizenship is not properly documented, i.e. they are at risk of statelessness. It means that these people have a right to be citizens of Ukraine by law, but for various reasons could not or cannot receive documents to confirm their citizenship which results in their being unable to enjoy most rights and freedoms related to citizenship. Besides, such persons are deprived of access to registration of civil status (birth, marriage, etc.), which in turn puts their children at risk of statelessness, thereby putting 25