Plans to repair the airport near Donetsk turned out similarly. The airport, which was ravaged by fighting back in 2014 and was subsequently part of the front line on the separatist side, was until recently used by the Russian armed forces as a place from which the Shahid combat drones took off. Finally, in March, the Ukrainian army – literally. It targeted the object with ATACMS and SCALP missiles.
Efforts to attract new residents
The reason why they came up with similar plans in Russia at all, some read as efforts to attract more people to the occupied territories and at the same time to keep the population that remained living there. The vision that the region has at least some kind of future may have a hidden meaning – filling the space left by Ukrainians and gradually erasing the traces of Ukrainian settlement.
The fact that the ethnic composition of the population is changing in the occupied territories is not a new fact. In this case, the example of the city of Mariupol is usually mentioned, where the Russians really rushed – they started reconstructing the seaside city practically in 2022, so that they could show new residential areas and then attract people from Russian regions to favorable mortgages.
According to some sources, around 60,000 people have already moved from Russia to Mariupol. The region by the Sea of Azov has also become a destination for labor migrants from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan who find employment in the construction industry.
The fact that Russians prefer to buy real estate in Mariupol is also confirmed by the head of the Russian Institute of Spatial Planning, Dina Sattarovová. According to her, about 25 percent of buyers are residents of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, 75 percent of buyers are people from different parts of Russia. According to her, it is these data that they use to create a “portrait of the future resident” of Mariupol and plan the city’s infrastructure, notes the regional Mariupol website, whose workers live in Ukraine.
“Let’s recall that after the massive destruction in 2022, a significant part of Mariupol’s population was forced to leave. Instead, the housing that the occupiers are currently building is actively being sold under mortgage programs that are available primarily to Russians,” the website noted in this regard.
To Mariupol from Moscow, to Luhansk from the border village
Although it could be expected that the region would attract mainly people from poorer parts of Russia to favorable real estate prices, according to Andryushchenko, the investment boom rather appealed to the middle class, including residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg. According to him, success depends on how effectively developers and advertising can sell the vision of life in the occupied territory. In this regard, Mariupol has one fundamental advantage over other, often depressed industrial cities – the sea.
However, Russians do not only move to seaside resorts such as Mariupol, Heničesk or Skadovsk. According to Andryushchenko, they also inhabit Luhansk, which has been under Russian control since 2014. However, people from the adjacent Russian regions – from the Kursk, Belgorod or Volgograd regions – tend to go there. “These are mainly people from the countryside who are looking for new housing leaving the dying villages,” the analyst told .
At the same time, Andryushchenko pointed out that although the Russians use the figure of 114,000 in official plans, demographic indicators indicate an ambition to gradually resettle up to a million people in these territories. For comparison: Donetsk itself had a million inhabitants before the war, and the entire Donetsk region was one of the most populated parts of Ukraine with four million people.
Today, according to some statistics, only about 1.1 million people live in the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Homes as spoils of war
Most people were forced to leave the area. Either as a result of the war or because they simply refused to live under occupation. What happens to their property in the meantime? One story for all.
The website of the French station recently described the experience of Ukrainian Olena, who recognized her house in a photo of her daughter’s former classmate. She stayed to live in the occupied city and married a Russian soldier. After the lavish wedding, the newlyweds received a gift from the occupation authorities – they could choose a house according to their wishes. And they chose the house of Olena in question.
“From the photos she posted on Facebook after the wedding, I saw the new owners of our house. The newlyweds did not disdain the dishes, bed linen and even the clothes we left there. They boasted that they got a fully furnished house, including furniture and household appliances,” the woman described.
According to RFI, a similar story is not unique. The occupation authorities explain the absence of owners in their own way – as a formal reason for seizing property. RFI reminds that Ukrainians have encountered similar practices since 2014 in Crimea, where the local authorities “nationalized” around four thousand objects. After 2022, this practice was extended to other occupied territories.
Half a million “ownerless” properties
As the station reports, according to the Russian Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography, there are about half a million properties classified as “ownerless” in the occupied territories of Ukraine today.
Expropriation of property is relatively easy in the occupied territories. The authorities create registers of “problem” objects, and if the owners are gone for a long time, the controlled courts will transfer their property to the municipality. According to the RFI, the owners can theoretically receive compensation, but the condition is a Russian passport. In practice, a person who fled before the war would have to return and apply for Russian citizenship.
New legislation will make life more complicated for owners who might try to sell their apartment or house remotely. In the occupied territories of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson and Donetsk regions, the standards on the recognition of Ukrainian real estate documents will cease to apply as of July 1.
According to the RFI, the Russian authorities will stop accepting them prematurely, although they were originally supposed to do so until 2028.
