Applicants for Estonian citizenship must renounce their current nationality, but Ukraine does not allow renunciation during wartime, Madise noted, adding that an exception cannot be made in the case of Ukrainian citizens. The stance does not violate human rights, the justice chancellor said.

Madise recently responded to a complaint submitted to her office and found that refusing to grant Estonian citizenship to a Ukrainian national is not contrary to the Constitution.

Estonia does not permit dual citizenship, which means that to obtain an Estonian passport, the applicant must renounce any other citizenship they may hold; formal renunciation must be obtained from the country of their initial citizenship.

Ukraine currently does not at present allow its citizens to renounce their citizenship, meaning Ukrainian nationals are effectively unable to obtain Estonian citizenship.

The Ministry of the Interior told ERR about a halfway-house measure: when a Ukrainian national submits an application for Estonian citizenship, if all other requirements have been met save for confirmation from the Ukrainian authorities, the applicant may be granted a form of conditional citizenship. This conditional status would take full effect once permission was obtained from Ukrainian authorities.

However, this conditional citizenship does not equate to full citizenship of Estonia, with all the rights that entails; the applicant remains a Ukrainian citizen.

The Chancellor of Justice noted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states no one can be arbitrarily deprived either of their nationality or of the right to change their nationality, though a wartime situation can obscure this latter point.

"The right to renounce citizenship is often linked to specific restrictions, such as fulfilling military service obligations," Madise said.

The European Convention on Nationality provides that a state should not require a person to renounce another citizenship as a condition for acquiring its nationality if renouncing is impossible or cannot be a reasonable requirement. However, Estonia has not acceded to the convention.

"You noted in your petition that Ukraine is currently not releasing people from its citizenship due to martial law. There is no reason to regard this situation as permanent," Madise wrote in her response to the complaint, adding: "Consequently, there is no reason to make exceptions for Ukrainian citizens to the requirement of renouncing another citizenship."

Statistics show there are 54,359 Ukrainian citizens resident in Estonia. According to the Ministry of the Interior, more than half of these people fled to Estonia because of the war and have been granted temporary protection as a result.

These recipients of temporary protection in any case cannot apply for citizenship yet because they have not lived in Estonia for the required eight years. Many also do not hold long-term Estonian residence permit, another prerequisite for applying for citizenship.

The Ministry of the Interior statistics for last year show that 82 Ukrainians applied for Estonian citizenship with 22 obtaining it. However it should be noted that residence permit applications and decisions are not directly comparable across years, as more than a year may pass between an application and a decision.

Former Ukrainian citizens who became Estonian citizens last year most likely submitted their applications before the outbreak of the full-scale war in February 2022.

Since the start of the war, interest in obtaining Estonian citizenship has also increased among Russian citizens resident in Estonia, as well as among people with undetermined citizenship, commonly known as holders of "gray passport holders."

Siiri Leskov, an adviser with the Ministry of the Interior's border and migration department, noted that despite issues Russia is not completely refusing to cooperate in the renunciation process with regard to its citizens wanting to get Estonian citizenship.

"Wait times are indeed long, which makes the process more time-consuming than before, but people are still being released from Russian citizenship," Leskov said.

There are more Russian citizens resident in Estonia – 74,069 – than there are Ukrainian; of these the bulk of the Russian citizens (69,389) hold a long-term residence permit.

In 2025, 461 Russian citizens applied for Estonian citizenship and 314 received it.

Grey passport holders resident in Estonia currently number 57,299 people holding so-called gray passports. Last year, 299 of these applied for Estonian citizenship, with 297 obtaining it.

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