Russian Politicians Urge Moscow to Denounce Dual Citizenship Accord with Tajikistan

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 9 – Thirty years ago, the Russian Federation and Tajikistan signed a treaty establishing that all citizens of one country are automatically citizens of the other, the only such arrangement on the post-Soviet space and one adopted nominally to help that Central Asian republic recover from a civil war and in fact intended to integrate it more tightly with Russia.

            Now, however, an increasing number of Russians, including senior members of the Duma, are urging Moscow to denounce this agreement because of what they see as its negative impact on the Russian Federation (ritmeurasia.ru/news--2025-12-08--priezzhih-pod-kontrol.-dvojnoe-grazhdanstvo-rossii-i-tadzhikistana-otmenjat-84476).

            The 1995 accord gives “special rights to Tajiks on the territory of Russia and to Russians on that of Tajikistan;” but as there are now more than a million Tajiks in Russia and only a relative handful of ethnic Russians in Tajikistan, it is the Russians who are raising the issue of denouncing that treaty rather than Tajiks and the government of Tajikistan.

            As Russian commentator Kirill Ozimko points out, to understand why the 1995 treaty is being questioned in Russia, one must recognize the key difference between the dual citizenship arrangements it establishes and a situation in which the citizen of one country simply has one or more passports from another.

            “An important feature of dual citizenship is that its holders have the right to choose which country they will serve in the military of and which they will pay taxes in. For example, if a person is a tax resident of Tajikistan, he will pay taxes and serve in the military exclusively in that country.”

            “Having a Russian passport does not obligate [Tajiks] to serve in the Russian military,” Ozimko continues. Moreover, Russian citizens who get a Tajik passport or Tajiks who get a Russian one “are not required to inform their country’s immigration service … and when crossing the Russian or Tajikistan border dual citizens can use either passport.”

            In contrast, the commentator says, “a second citizenship simply entails obtaining an additional passport, and each country with which an individual is connected considers them exclusively their own citizen and therefor imposes obligations on them regardless of whether they have fulfilled them in another country.”

            It is striking that Russia has a dual citizenship agreement only with Tajikistan and that it has not signed such an accord even with Belarusians, who can obtain Russian citizenship via a simplified procedure but “that will be a second citizenship rather than a dual one,” Ozimko concludes. Many of the former Soviet republics even have bans on second citizenships.

            At a time when the question of military service is of rising significance in Russia given Putin’s war in Ukraine, many members of the Duma are suggesting that the 1995 accord should be denounced so that everyone will know what rights and responsibilities Tajiks who have declared Russian citizenship will be unambiguously responsible for serving Russia.

Given that almost half a million Tajiks have done so, many in the Duma are saying the 1995 treaty must be denounced; and according to Ozimko, the government is likely to agree with them – especially because some fear that otherwise the number of Tajiks with uncertain citizenship living in the Russian Federation might try to form a national republic.