The Weaponisation of More than Citizenship But Anne Peters herself offers a few caveats that Jain misses. Importantly, Peters suggests that “an active Russian ‘passportisation’ policy” was “allegedly” pursued in Crimea since 1991. Given this uncertainty, she chooses not to include Crimea as a case. Instead, her analysis focuses on the ‘most conspicuous and documented instances of Russian extraterritorial naturalization policies, namely in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria’. As Peters outlines, but Jain misses, the nature of Crimea’s passportisation is messier and less clear compared to other cases where en masse conferral of Russian passports is more easily identifiable. That Crimea was passportised by Russia prior to annexation is an often-repeated statement as if it were a fact. Many scholars and policy observers, including Jakob Hedenskog and Merle Maigre, have suggested that Crimea was passportised long before annexation.55 Similarly, Taras Kuzio indicates that up to one hundred thousand of Crimea’s residents were passportised by Russia as of 2008.56 Before annexation, this lens of passportisation was used to suggest that Crimea was “next” on Russia’s violent roadmap. After annexation, scholars described passportisation as a “postfactum” justification for Russia’s annexation of Crimea.57 For example, Charles King suggested that passportisation made Crimea susceptible to annexation by Russia, as if Crimea’s residents supported annexation because they were already Russian citizens.58 Such perspectives suggest annexation was a fait accompli because of passportisation. But numbers, such as those quoted by Kuzio, are difficult to trace back to original sources and skate over the reality of who were Russian citizens in Crimea prior to annexation. In the main, Russian citizens were not ordinary residents of Crimea, but those associated with the Russian military base in Crimea, including military pensioners. Individual Agency and the Lens of Passportisation Moreover, the lens of passportisation denies agency to those assumed to have been passportised. It grants agency to the state passportising but not to the individuals being passportised. Restoring agency is also about addressing consent as an empirical question. Did Crimea’s residents want Russian citizenship or not? Why? What kind of individuals wanted Russian citizenship or had Russian citizenship? How did they acquire it? And after acquisition, how did they use it? I address these questions in my recently published monograph, Kin Majorities.59 Specifically, I explore who wanted Russian citizenship, who had Russian citizenship, and how Russian citizenship practices of acquisition aligned (or did not) with self-identification of people as ethnically Russian and with the Russian state. In my fieldwork conducted in 2012 and 2013, months before annexation, none of my interviewees in Crimea had Russian citizenship. Moreover, very few participants wanted Russian citizenship. Most saw Russian citizenship not only as unavailable and accessible, at least through legal means, but as illegitimate and undesirable. For them, Russian citizenship conferred rights that they neither wanted nor needed. A small minority of participants in Crimea did want Russian citizenship as a leverage against Ukraine. They saw Russian citizenship as a way to gain greater rights and protection within Ukraine. But this small minority was also a very specific constituency of participants, associated 55 Hedenskog J. (2008), Crimea After the Georgian Crisis, Swedish Defense Research Agency, Crimea After the Georgian Crisis DocsLib; Maigre M. (2008), Crimea: The Achilles’ Heel of Ukraine, International Centre for Defence Studies, Merle Maigre - Crimea the Achilles Heel of Ukraine.pdf (icds.ee). 56 Kuzio T. (2008), ‘Russian Passports as Moscow’s Geopolitical Tool’, Eurasia Daily Monitor 5(176). 57 Jordana J. et. al. (2019), Changing Borders in Europe: Exploring the Dynamics of Integration, Differentiation and Self-Determination in the European Union, Routledge. 58 King C. (2014), ‘Crimea, The Tinderbox’, New York Times, 1 April 2014, Opinion | Crimea, the Tinderbox - The New York Times (nytimes.com). 59 Knott E. (2022), Kin Majorities: Identity and Citizenship in Crimea and Moldova, McGill-Queen’s University Press. European University Institute 12