mous Republic of Crimea, Odessa, and Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts. The next census will be conducted in 2020.9 According to assessments made by the UNHCR on the basis of official data, in 2017 35,294 people who were stateless or at risk of statelessness were living in Ukraine,10 while a 2017 report from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights states that only 78.1 percent of residents of Ukraine have identity documents.11 These statistics are approximate, since stateless persons generally do not want to be identified because they fear the consequences of living in Ukraine in violation of the rules and also rarely have information about mechanisms for becoming documented. Several million people have become internally displaced persons or have been forced to flee the country because they live in territories that are not controlled by the Ukrainian government due to the annexation of the Crimean peninsula and the military conflict in eastern Ukraine. This means that the risk of statelessness has become pressing for thousands of residents of these territories. There is particular concern for children born in these territories after the start of the conflict, since the very fact of their birth must be established in court. For example, of the 62,560 children born in territories outside of Ukraine’s control from January 2015 to June 2016, only 20,891 acquired Ukrainian birth certificates through court proceedings from February 2016 through July 2018.12 In Russia, there is still no effective way to legalize the tens of thousands of stateless people who have spent years trying to become Russian citizens. According to published data, the number of stateless people in Russia is falling, but is still high: the 2010 Russian census reports that there were over 178,000 stateless persons in the country,13 while data from UNHCR global reports show 9  Official website of the UNHCR in Ukraine, https://www.unhcr.org/ ua/%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%B8-%D0%B1%D0%B5%D0%B7-%D0%B3%D1 %80%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B0%D0%B4%D1%8F%D0%BD%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0 %B0 10 Statelessness Index. Ukraine. https://index.statelessness.eu/country/ukraine?fbclid =IwAR2C8g3Dl6DR1khjbMvOEtlx23ZekJi91wOFt5A3LG46TqqaZcpsujMdDdw 11 Compendium of Good Practices in Identity Management in the OSCE Region, 2017, pg. 54 https://polis.osce.org/compendium-good-practices-identity-managementosce-region 12 According to data from Ukraine’s Ministry of Justice, response to a request from UNHCR. 13 All-Russian Population Census, 2010. http://www.gks.ru/free_doc/new_site/ perepis2010/croc/perepis_itogi1612.htm 11