Russia’s Zakharova claims US “forcibly” grants citizenship to diplomats’ children

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova stated that the United States Department of State is “literally forcing” US citizenship on children of Russian diplomats. She described this as a tool of pressure on personnel and an example of the decline of what she called “the much-vaunted American democracy.” According to her, this practice has been used since 2023. She did not specify how many children have been affected.

“The State Department, or those behind the façade of American diplomacy, have begun to extend US citizenship to children of employees of Russian consulates born within US jurisdiction—literally by force—under the pretext of the constitutionally enshrined ‘right of the soil’ and the allegedly limited nature of consular immunity,” Zakharova wrote in a column for Vedomosti.

The spokesperson stressed that the actions of US officials contradict both international law and US domestic law. She argued that diplomats are not fully subject to the jurisdiction of the host country, and therefore, birthright citizenship does not automatically apply to their children. She noted that the Supreme Court of the United States has previously excluded children of foreign diplomats from those granted citizenship by birth, and that the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations guarantees diplomats immunity from “compulsory obligations.”

Zakharova also described the granting of citizenship as the work of the “deep state.” “The Russian side does not recognise the imposition of American citizenship on Russian nationals born to families of our diplomatic, administrative-technical, and consular personnel in the United States,” she wrote.