By Olha Chepil | 2024-01-23

KYIV -- The Kremlin is attempting to use the resources of Ukraine's occupied territories to build military units and army training grounds and to open militarized universities, according to researchers.

The Russian Defense Ministry has begun to spread its structures in seized territories in order to transform the regions of eastern and southern Ukraine into a base for further attacks on NATO countries, said human rights activist Pavel Lisyansky, founder of the Institute for Strategic Studies and Security.

"We've concluded that they are building one large militarized zone where there will be no normal human life, there will be no enterprises," he told Kontur. "All they need are military personnel, so they can keep advancing."

Together with his team, Lisyansky has spent several months researching and analyzing Russia's actions in occupied Ukraine since the start of its full scale invasion nearly two years ago.

In 2023 alone the Kremlin created four military units in the occupied provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia, he said.

"They have begun creating military training grounds everywhere en masse. They are already training and drafting the local population and sending it to participate in military exercises," said Lisyansky. "There are putting all of their efforts there."

"Russia is building training sites instead of enterprises. We see that Russia does not repair the cities it captured. Everything around is abandoned. There is no construction," he said.

Training facilities

Russian forces have also built two military training facilities in the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces.

The first such training ground began operating in October 2023 in Luhansk province, where the Russian army has built its largest firing range, capable of accommodating the simultaneous training of three motorized rifle battalions.

The site also includes training areas for both tanks and trucks.

"Preparation of military personnel is in full swing at the training grounds," Lisyansky said.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu last month mentioned the two new training locations in occupied Ukraine.

"Seven state-of-the-art training grounds are being equipped in the area of the special military operation. Work is complete at two of them," he said December 1 during a Defense Ministry videoconference.

"Additional exercises were conducted with training ground personnel, which will boost the effectiveness and safety of operations at the training grounds," he said.

The Kremlin intends for drafted Russian reservists and contract troops to undergo initial training within Russia but then to complete the final stage at the training facilities in occupied Ukraine in order to adapt to war conditions, according to analysts.

"Since 2014, they sent men to be instructed at training grounds in Rostov and Taganrog. And then they set all this up in Luhansk province and Donetsk province," said Lyudmila Huseynova, a human rights activist and spokeswoman for SEMA Ukraine, an NGO.

A native of Donetsk, where she was captured by the Russians, Huseynova is alive thanks to a prisoner exchange.

"One training site was near the village of Guselshchikovo in Novoazovsky district. There they trained both those who were recruited from the occupied territories and those who came from Russia to fight," she told Kontur.

'One big military base'

Russia began militarizing the occupied territories back in 2014. In addition to military units and enlistment offices, they also created militarized universities.

The occupiers have been seeking to brainwash children in their formative years, "enrolling children as young as 10-12 years old ... and already instructing in military science," Huseynova said.

Russia opened similar "universities" in 2015 in the occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, and in 2022 they were simply integrated into the educational system of Russia.

But now this process is gaining momentum, observers say.

For example, the Russians have announced that a branch of the Nakhimov Naval School will open in Mariupol, a key Ukrainian seaport that Moscow has occupied since 2022.

The main campus is in St. Petersburg, where children receive training for seven years, starting in the fifth grade.

"Russia is one big military base that is half a prison," said Ivan Stupak, a former State Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officer and scholar at the Ukrainian Institute of the Future. "[It] is all bases, some military airfields, training grounds, military schools. And they are doing exactly the same in Ukraine."

Stupak said Russia is trying to solidify its control of the occupied territories and put additional military facilities there.

In particular, from the first days of the invasion, Russian troops have done everything possible to convert the city of Mariupol into a military base.

Locals say that last August, a Russian warship temporarily occupied Mariupol's port and that the invaders also stationed four combat helicopters there.

"In Mariupol, they are building barracks of some kind as a distraction -- Potemkin villages," Stupak told Kontur. "For them, this city is a huge opportunity for skimming money and for placing ammunition depots."

Constant threats

However, Stupak pointed out, Russia cannot completely militarize the occupied territories without developing the necessary logistics.

Accordingly, the Kremlin's strategic goal is to strengthen railway links between occupied Ukraine and Russia.

One plan is to build a railway line from Rostov-on-Don, Russia, to occupied Dzhankoi in northern Crimea. It will pass, if plans work out, through captured Mariupol, Berdyansk and Melitopol.

"This line is for transporting munitions from the Russian mainland," Stupak said, adding that the previously used Crimean Bridge route is "not very operational."

If Russia manages to implement its railroad plans, it will partially mitigate the vulnerability of the Crimean Bridge.

Moscow's actions mirror the tactics of the Soviet Union, which in its day placed an entire row of military bases, units and airfields on its western borders to prepare for confrontation with NATO, said Lisyansky.

"These is Russia's systematic efforts to transform the occupied parts of Ukraine into a militarized zone," he said. "There will be military units there to constantly threaten the rest of Ukraine."

"There won't be any kind of normal life on these lands any longer," he added.