LUGANSK, May 25. /TASS/. Some 70% of residents of the liberated regions in Ukraine’s south want to receive Russian passports, a member of the Russian lower house of parliament told TASS on Wednesday.

People in Melitopol, Kherson, Berdyansk, and Rozovka, which wants to exit from the Zaporozhye Region and become part of the Donetsk People’s Republic, have been expressing their desire to obtain Russian passports, said Viktor Vodolatsky, First Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Issues of the Commonwealth of Independent States and Contacts with Fellow Countrymen.

The passport issuance procedure in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics has been going smoothly, though security checks will need to be conducted to launch the process in the liberated territories, which can take up to three months, Vodolatsky noted.

"A mechanism as part of the federal law will need to be worked out," the MP said, adding that he saw no major obstacles to granting Russian citizenship to people in those regions.