By Olha Chepil | 2023-11-23

KYIV -- The Kremlin is bringing Russian workers to occupied areas of Ukraine as part of an effort to transform local demographics to its advantage, say observers.

To further strengthen their foothold on occupied land, the Russians bring in migrants and workers, collect information about pro-Kyiv residents and cart away Ukrainian scientific archives and patents.

Job postings that have flooded the internet are seeking workers to come to Mariupol, Berdyansk or other occupied Ukrainian cities.

"The Russians are bolstering their social presence, because they understand that soldiers alone cannot direct everything ... Above all, there must be teachers whom they send to schools to brainwash children with their Russian world," Ihor Reiterovych, a political scientist and director of political and legal programs at the Ukrainian Center for Social Development, told Kontur.

The Kremlin is bringing Russian teachers to occupied Ukrainian territories, despite a huge teacher shortage in Russia, according to Reiterovych.

Some of them are coming for the money -- the Kremlin is willing to invest huge sums in the occupied territories of Ukraine, offering migrant workers salaries that are significantly higher than in Russian regions, he said.

"This is an imperialist phenomenon -- the mixing of the population. That is what the Russians are doing in Crimea," he said, referring to the Ukrainian peninsula that Russia illegally annexed in 2014. "They are flinging their citizens there from the motherland in order to completely change the future ethnic composition."

"And then they'll say that these are Russian territories because Russians live here," said Reiterovych.

"Today's Russia is the world's last imperialist country, in the sense of the hard-core imperialism of the 19th century. They have always resettled and mixed ethnic groups, and then sent in their bureaucrats from the Kremlin to lead."

Russian workers

The Kremlin's efforts to bring in Russian workers are also aimed at dealing with a lack of professionals, given that Ukrainians in occupied territories often do not want to work for the invaders.

As a result, the Kremlin has been forced to look for doctors, teachers and other professionals from remote areas of Russia.

The workers that the Russians need the most in the occupied territories include drivers, loaders, agricultural workers and mining industry specialists.

In Mariupol, for example, construction workers are now arriving en masse from the most remote corners of Russia as well as from Central Asian countries.

The city, which has been under Russian occupation since May 2022, was almost completely flattened by Russian bombs.

"Mariupol is filled with men from various former republics of the USSR, from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan," said Maria, a journalist working in Mariupol who asked for her first name to be changed and her last name to be withheld.

"They are building, laying tile, fabricating windows. The Russians bombed a building, and now they are doing repairs there -- or pretending to be doing repairs."

The construction workers receive good wages by local standards, according to Maria.

Groups of several workers move into empty apartments. But the Russians frequently take advantage of these workers, so the migrants have to work in inhuman conditions, she said.

"Plasterers, painters, tilers. They are all looking for cheap housing so that they can keep more money in their pocket," Maria told Kontur.

"Now ... I look at who is inhabiting my hometown, and I want to cry, because all these people represent the Russians, who destroyed my Mariupol," she said.

Scientists, psychologists

While many migrants are seeking to make money in occupied Ukraine, other Russian professionals are there for more nefarious purposes.

The Kremlin has sent scientists from the Russian Academy of Sciences to Donetsk, which has been occupied since 2014, to study local patents, Ukrainian authorities reported in November.

Such patents might have scientific or economic value for the Russians to steal.

"Undoubtedly, the Russians are now going into the scientific archives and taking everything away from there. There is no oversight there in Donetsk ... they are seizing patents, seizing designs," Lyudmila Huseynova, a human rights activist and spokeswoman for the NGO SEMA Ukraine, told Kontur.

The Russians are also plundering 1,000- to 4,000-year-old ancient burial mounds in Donetsk province, said Huseynova, who was previously imprisoned for speaking out against Russia and later freed in a prisoner exchange.

"No one knows what they took from these mounds ... possibly gold and relics. Donetsk province has very many research institutions ... related to the development of mines, the extraction of useful minerals, research related to the Sea of Azov," she said.

"This represented all the research potential in Donbas. They looted it all," Huseynova said.

Local scholars are intimidated as the Russians are keeping tabs on local residents.

"They have a so-called 'dossier' on any such person, and this dossier is updated from time to time ... often such people may be wiretapped or further 'processed,' as they call it," said Huseynova, who saw that the Russians had a dossier on her when she was detained.

Russia has sent psychologists to occupied territories to collect information about pro-Kyiv residents, the Ukrainian National Resistance Center (NRC) said in October.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) approved a team of psychologists arriving from Russia to Luhansk province, where they opened 10 mental health offices, according to the NRC.

But instead of treating residents' problems, they are spying on them and propagandizing for the Russian occupation, the NRC said.