By Galina Korol | 2024-06-03

KYIV -- Ukrainians living in occupied areas of Zaporizhzhia province officially can no longer get a job without a Russian passport, according to an order signed by Russian occupation governor Yevgeny Balitsky that took effect in April.

Balitsky drew up a list of 30 professions from which Ukrainians are barred, including wholesale trade, the food industry and even real estate renting and leasing, according to an article published in April by the National Resistance Center, an organization created by Ukrainian special forces.

"This is the basis of the policy of genocide of the Ukrainians, and everyone who follows these rules will become an accomplice to this crime," the center said.

The province is currently in a transitional period, after which all Ukrainians who refuse to get a Russian passport will become illegal "migrants" in their own land, it added.

The decree is the latest move by occupation authorities to force locals to accept Russian citizenship.

"When the occupation authorities began mass passportization in 2022 ... they declared that if Ukrainian citizens became Russian citizens, they would pay 13% income tax, and if citizens declined Russian citizenship, they would be able to work, but their income tax would be 30%," Stanislav Zakharevich, chairperson of the Sofievsky rural military administration of Berdyansk district in Zaporizhzhia province, told Kontur.

Many defiant residents sacrificed almost three times as much of their small incomes to avoid becoming Russian citizens, he said.

"And at the beginning of 2023, the occupation authorities issued an ultimatum to employers, and they in turn to their employees: either you get a Russian passport or end up unemployed."

"There was no longer talk of a 30% tax. Just a passport or you're fired," Zakharevich said.

"The occupier is doing absolutely everything to turn as many Ukrainians as possible into Russian citizens, which is why these very repressive measures are being introduced to ensure that people get Russian citizenship quickly," said Kostyantyn Batozsky, a political scientist and director of the Azov Development Agency.

"All this is being done solely so that Russia can later make this claim: 'you see, there are no Ukrainians and we are protecting Russians there,'" he said.

Even more than two years later, the occupation authorities have not achieved the desired results, he said.

"Many people still have not given up hope that we [Ukraine] will return," Batozsky said.

Labor shortage

The latest restrictions come amid labor shortages, especially in professions that require experience and education.

The occupiers still fear allowing local residents into any leadership positions, even if a would-be applicant has declared loyalty to Russia.

"For senior positions in the administration and, very importantly for the education system, in schools, they mainly bring in someone from Russia," said Batozsky.

"They bring [Russian residents] even for lower-level positions in municipalities, because they don't trust the locals," he said.

However, residents of Russia are reluctant to travel to the occupied territories, Mykola Osychenko, a Ukrainian journalist and former president of Mariupol Television, told Kontur.

"After Mariupol and Melitopol were occupied, the Russian authorities called for young teachers to go and work there. They offered them very high wages -- about 160,000 RUB ($1,800) a month, and gave them housing."

"But teachers in Russia .... understood perfectly well that going to work in an occupation zone is not a very good idea."

"Accordingly, nothing worked out for the occupiers in this regard," he said.

According to Osychenko, nearly the only newcomers happily traveling with their families to occupied Mariupol are guest workers.

"Russia is pursuing a policy of gradually replacing the local population with guest workers," he said.

Fighting for survival

The occupiers are not only populating the Ukrainian city with foreigners but also depriving the remaining locals of nearly every opportunity to earn money, Osychenko added.

Mariupol's main employers were previously two giant metallurgical plants -- the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works and the Illyich Mariupol Metallurgical Plant -- both of which Russia destroyed in combat.

Their destruction means that the plants' former workers must now seek jobs elsewhere, including in construction.

But an unpleasant reality awaits them.

"Many locals tell me that migrant workers in the same job are paid many times more than the locals. For example, if a Ukrainian construction worker is paid [per month] 38,000 RUB ($430), then a guest worker in the same job is paid 120,000 RUB ($1,350). That is, the occupiers are trying everything to lure guest workers there," said Osychenko.

Russia's current treatment of the occupied Ukrainian territories is recreating the turbulent 1990s, when residents survived only by trading illegally in informal markets and finding menial work, say analysts.

Osychenko recounted the story of a Mariupol woman who recently left the city after two years of effort.

"This woman could not leave Mariupol because she did not have documents. Her Ukrainian passport burned up during the shelling [by Russia in 2022], and she tried to get a Russian passport for two years because there was no way for her to confirm her identity to the occupiers," said Osychenko.

"To survive, this woman was forced to work these two years as a cleaner in a store, and she worked illegally in her hometown, where she was born and lived all her life."

Eventually the woman obtained a Russian passport for a bribe and left.

"She worked under the table and was paid a monthly salary of 4,000-7,000 RUB ($50-$70) a month. Horrible," Osychenko said.