The Russian newspaper Izvestia published an article stating that more than 100,000 Zaporizhzhia residents had already applied for Russian citizenship, and thousands had prepared the necessary documents. The publication refers to the statement of the collaborator Vladimir Rogov, appointed by the occupiers as the head of the so-called council of the military-civil administration of the Zaporizhzhia region, on the air of the Russian propaganda TV channel "Solovyov Live."

"There are already more than 100 thousand people - this is 100% who are now in queues. And thousands of people who have already prepared packages of documents," Rogov said. The article also mentions the following: "In the first three days, the city's passport office [Berdyansk] processed 25 applications for Russian citizenship. There are 70 more people on the list… Several residents of Melitopol have also already been given Russian identity cards, Rogov said on June 11. On the same day, Vladimir Saldo, the head of the Kherson region's Military-Civil Administration (MCA), received Russian citizenship. In addition to him, the first passports of the Russian Federation that day were handed over to 25 more residents of the region."

The high-profile title of the article is another fake propaganda machine. First, Zaporizhzhia is not occupied but is part of Ukraine. Therefore, mentioning Zaporizhzhia in the title is already a manipulation to attract attention. Secondly, in addition to the actual regional center, there are two large cities in the region - Berdyansk (population - of 109 thousand people as of 2020) and Melitopol (almost 150 thousand people as of 2021), which are now temporarily occupied. That is, when the occupiers talk about 100 thousand inhabitants of Zaporizhzhia, it is rather about the number of Ukrainians who remained in the temporarily occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia region for various reasons.

In addition, the occupiers are actively spreading information that obtaining Russian passports has also begun in Kherson. However, for Kherson (a regional center with a population of almost 280 thousand as of January 2022), they show much more modest figures - there only 1.5 thousand people "expressed a desire to change citizenship."