THE PROBLEM OF STATELESSNESS IN UKRAINE AND THE WAYS OF ADDRESSING IT government that gained control over those territories 15. It should be noted that the question on the stateless persons of Palestinian origin is not entirely clear to some Ukrainian authorities responsible for maintaining statistics. For example, according to the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, 12,000 “Palestinian citizens” have entered Ukraine during 1995-2013. It should be remembered that the so-called “Palestinian citizens” include a high percentage of stateless persons. Unfortunately, available statistics do not allow ascertaining an exact number of individuals who are stateless among the total number of “Palestinian citizens” mentioned above. There are currently in Ukraine stateless persons who entered the country either with Palestinian refugee travel documents or with the Palestinian Authority passports. It should be pointed out that if they lodge an application for Ukrainian citizenship, they need to meet the requirement of continuous lawful residence in the territory of Ukraine during three years after their entry into Ukraine, as per Article 9(3) of the nationality legislation. In addition, they need to submit a declaration on absence of foreign citizenship under its Article 9(2). III. 3 Formerly deported people and their descendants who returned to Ukraine The reason for emergence of this category consisted of mass violations of fundamental human rights that occurred in the Soviet history. By now, the repressive acts against the peoples subjected to forced resettlement have been recognized as grave crimes and are publicly condemned. In practice, however, elimination of adverse consequences of the above-mentioned events is still going on today. After Ukraine’s independence, the issue of citizenship of former deportees was not immediately solved. Until 1997, the Law on Citizenship of Ukraine contained no provision on citizenship of such persons, therefore deportees and their descendants who returned to Ukraine were considered foreigners or stateless persons. They could acquire Ukrainian citizenship only via the procedure of admission to citizenship of Ukraine that required meeting certain conditions. Not surprisingly, only a small number of deportees and their descendants used 15 http://www.statelessness.eu/blog/protecting-stateless-palestinian-refugees-%E2%80%93-eu-court-justice-opens-new-chapter http://www.fmreview.org/en/FMRpdfs/FMR26/FMR2603.pdf http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21566708-syrias-palestinian-refugees-are-being-both-thumped-and-coldshouldered-stateless http://www.refworld.org/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/rwmain?page=search&docid=53859cda4&skip=0&query=stateless%20palest 23