5 | PROTECTING STATELESS PERSONS FROM ARBITRARY DETENTION IN UKRAINE INTRODUCING THE INTERVIEWEES Irina Ivanova was born in Russia. Her parents brought her to Crimea in the mid 1990s when she was only eight. She has not heard from them since. She was brought up by her grandmother who unexpectedly died when Irina was still a teenager. Irina has lived all her adult life without an identity card or passport. She has been lucky to have the support of her friends and community in Kyiv, where she moved to try and sort out her life and obtain documentation. She has also been lucky to have never been detained as she looks like any average Ukrainian girl. However, she is conscious that the lack of ID makes her everyday life extremely difficult. Without documentation, she cannot continue her education. She cannot marry her Ukrainian partner, because Ukrainian law requires documentation to register a marriage.2 Irina is not eligible for Ukrainian citizenship or a residence permit as she did not reside in Ukraine at the time of the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and has no valid documents. Due to procedural barriers, she is also unable to obtain a Russian passport although in theory she may be eligible to receive Russian nationality. 1 David Gelashvili was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. He left the Republic with a USSR passport to what was then the Russian SSR to pursue his university studies, and in 1994 arrived in Ukraine. In the 1990s he was constantly apprehended in the “monkey houses” (the slang term for cells in district police stations) of the Kyiv city as he had no valid document and registration. In 1999, after completing five years of residence in Ukraine, he applied for citizenship. He was issued a Ukrainian passport and felt “the happiest man in the world”. But after one year, in 2000, his passport was revoked, allegedly for violating the rules of place of residence registration. During this process, the Ukrainian authorities also lost David’s Soviet passport. After a seven long ‘undocumented’ years David again received a permanent residence permit in 2007. This was annulled in 2015 by the State Migration Service of Ukraine (SMSU), when David applied for naturalisation. As part of the naturalisation process, the authorities verified the legality of the issuance of his residence permit and established that in breach of regulations, his Soviet passport was not submitted along with his previous application for a residence permit. This decision was challenged and a court case is pending. Due to many years in limbo, he and his wife made a conscious decision to not have children. He was also compelled to give up his business. It is only the support of his numerous friends that has kept him from despair. David has not told his elderly parents, who live in Georgia, that he is without any documents. He is unable to visit them even in an emergency.