Dutch genocide recognition and Ukraine's dual citizenship law
A look back at two parliamentary decisions, in The Hague and Kyiv, that framed memory and demography in June 2025.
What did parliaments in two countries decide about Ukraine's past and future in the days around 20 June 2025? On that date, the parliament of the Netherlands recognised the 1944 deportation of the Crimean Tatars by the Soviet Union as genocide. Two days earlier, on 18 June 2025, the parliament of Ukraine approved a law allowing multiple citizenship for Ukrainians.
Recognising a deportation
The deportation took place from 18 to 20 May 1944. Soviet authorities used cattle trains to move Crimean Tatars from Crimea to the Uzbek SSR, several thousand kilometres away. At least 191,044 people were subjected to it. The operation was supervised by Lavrentiy Beria, chief of Soviet state security and the secret police, and ordered by Joseph Stalin. Party members and Red Army soldiers were among those deported. The Crimean Tatars were one of several ethnic groups subjected to Stalin's policy of population transfer. The Dutch vote placed the parliament of the Netherlands among the legislatures that used the word genocide for these events.
Easing a demographic strain
The Ukrainian law had a different, forward-looking purpose. It was adopted as an attempt to ease a demographic crisis caused by the Russian invasion. By allowing multiple citizenship, Ukraine's parliament addressed the position of Ukrainians who hold, or may acquire, another nationality.
Two decisions, one context
The two decisions came from different institutions and concerned different questions: a historical judgement in the Netherlands and a citizenship reform in Ukraine. Both, however, were taken within a few days of each other, and both were shaped by the consequences of Russian state actions, one in 1944 and the other since the invasion.
