Russia has stripped a 44-year-old woman born in Ukraine's Sumy region of her Russian citizenship over online anti-Russian posts and statements, state news agency RIA Novosti reported on April 24, citing a law enforcement source.

Russian authorities have tightened citizenship rules substantially since the February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, expanding the grounds on which naturalised citizens can have their Russian passports revoked. Amendments to the citizenship law passed in April 2023 allow revocation for actions considered threatening to national security or for public statements against the Russian armed forces.

The woman had been living in Magadan in Russia's Far East for more than five years after obtaining Russian citizenship through a simplified procedure in 2019.

"The woman was deprived of citizenship for actions that posed a threat to Russia's national security, as well as for repeated anti-Russian statements on the internet and among residents of Kolyma," the source told the agency.

The case is the latest in a series of Russian citizenship revocations targeting Ukrainian-born residents who expressed opposition to Moscow's war on Ukraine.

In March, a similar measure was taken against a Ukrainian-born woman living in Kurgan in the Urals. That woman had moved to Russia in 2013 and obtained citizenship through a simplified procedure. From 2014, she had worked at a defence-industrial complex in Kurgan where she kept records of classified documentation.

Her citizenship was revoked over what the source described as an extremely negative attitude towards Russia's "special military operation" in Ukraine. Federal Security Service (FSB) officers had discovered correspondence with what the agency described as Ukrainian nationalists.

The Sumy region of Ukraine has been one of the areas most affected by cross-border hostilities since 2022, with the region targeted repeatedly by Russian forces. Magadan lies on Russia's Pacific coast, more than 10,000km from Ukraine.