Putin ‘paying Ukrainians to turn Russian’

Russia is paying people living in rebel-held regions of east Ukraine to switch citizenship in a feared prelude to invasion, a senior military analyst has claimed.

Dmytro Tymchuk, who has good sources among Ukrainian government forces, claimed the current ceasefire was being exploited to put Russian roubles into circulation, and a “massive replacement of Ukrainian passports” was under way.

“The population of the occupied territories have massively lost earnings, and for a paltry sum are ready to recognise any authority and take any nationality,” he said. The fear is that Russia will then send in troops, arguing it must protect its citizens — as it did in the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia.

Kiev’s UN representative Yuriy Serg-eyev described a “massive process of giving Russian passports in Donetsk and Lugansk ... to give Russian authorities a reason to bring troops to Uk-raine and protect ‘their citizens.’”