By Galina Korol | 2025-01-30

KYIV -- Russian authorities are forcing residents of temporarily occupied territory to quickly prove their property rights or else have the property declared "ownerless" and fall under the control of occupation regimes, human rights activists say.

Russian aggression has turned dozens of cities in Donbas, including Mariupol and Bakhmut, into ruins, and Russian occupation authorities are now confiscating what remains.

Ukrainian human rights activists have collected irrefutable evidence that Russia, in violation of international law and with the connivance of puppet local governments, is seizing the property of Ukrainian citizens who fled to save their lives.

"It can be estimated that 856,499 properties in the occupied territories are at risk of confiscation," Ukraine's Institute for Strategic Studies and Security (ISSS) and Eastern Human Rights Group said in a joint report published December 19.

"Russia wants to throw everything Ukrainian out of the occupied territories and it considers all local residents to be traitors," said human rights activist Pavlo Lysianskyi, director of the ISSS.

The first seizures of Ukrainian property came with the start of Russian aggression and the occupation of Luhansk and Donetsk provinces in 2014.

First the "squeezing" was unsystematic and often involved the help of illegal armed units, but when Russia unleashed its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the occupation authorities began to create "laws" they could use to scale up property grabs, said Lysianskyi.

"It's already tens of thousands of cases," he told Kontur.

It is happening in all the cities and villages that Russia has occupied in eastern and southern Ukraine.

'Re-registration'

For example, occupation authorities in Berdyansk are demanding that local residents "re-register" their property rights under Russian law. They threaten to "nationalize" the property of those who refuse to comply, according to the website of the Berdyansk City Territorial Hromada (community).

"For 're-registration,' the invaders require, above all, that Berdyansk residents have Russian citizenship and numerous documents and must be personally present, which not only makes this process complicated but also makes it impossible, particularly for those Ukrainians who cannot return to the occupation," reads a statement posted on the website on December 20.

The occupiers have enacted several laws on the confiscation of real estate, rights activists told Kontur.

Last June 27, the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) People's Council adopted Law 77-1, which allows declaring a property "ownerless" if the owner does not live on the site or has not paid utility bills for a year, the ISSS report said.

Similar laws have taken effect in other occupied territory, including Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson provinces.

Not just residential real estate is affected.

"In addition to housing, they [Russians] are confiscating minerals, enterprises, land plots and even market stalls," said Lysianskyi.

The "ownerless" property is registered with Rosreestr, the Russian registry agency. If the owner does not appear within 30 days, it transfers ownership of the asset to the municipality.

The occupation authorities meanwhile have made inheritance laws stricter. Under new rules that took effect last June, inheritance in temporarily occupied territory is possible only for Russian passport holders, according to the ISSS report.

'Losing everything'

Irina Safronova of Severodonetsk, Luhansk province, knows very well what it means to "lose everything you have earned through hard work over many years."

All her life she worked and anguished over her business there, and when the war reached the city, she, like thousands of other Severodonetsk residents, had to leave everything behind.

"I had a market. I owned four business spaces of my own. In Rubizhne, I had a whole workshop, practically a barn," Safronova told Kontur.

"I had millions sunk into real estate. And now I don't have [any of the properties]. All of them are in captured territory."

In November, Safronova saw an online news article saying that her market was on the list of "ownerless" properties and that the occupation administration had published the market's address on its website.

"They've already given it away," she said.

Safronova does not know the fate of her other commercial properties. "The only thing I've heard is that they have been looted," she said.

As for her house, only bare and broken walls remain.

"And I have no idea who owns the apartment now," she said, referring to another of her properties.

Currently living in public housing in Germany provided to Ukrainian refugees, Safronova learned all this from friends who remained in Severodonetsk.

In theory, she could return and try to save her properties, but for her it is a matter of principle.

"You choose between your conscience and how things are going to be for you subsequently in life... I'll tell you honestly, my position is no. Under no circumstances will I go there [to Severodonetsk] as long as Russia is there," she said.

Filtration

Indeed, by confiscating property, the occupation authorities succeeded in luring some Ukrainians back to the occupation, said Donetsk resident Stanislav Fedorchuk, a historian, Donetsk Euromaidan activist and veteran of the Russian-Ukrainian war.

"For many people, this apartment in Donetsk, Mariupol or in another city in the occupied territory is ... the only property they have purchased in their entire lives," Fedorchuk told Kontur.

So attempting to save their property, owners go back. Or at least they try.

Entering temporarily occupied Ukraine without a Russian passport is practically impossible. The only way is through Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport.

"[There] you go through the filtration procedures applied by Federal Security Service (FSB) officers," said Fedorchuk. "A significant portion of those who try to enter through Sheremetyevo, even the elderly, are turned away and simply not allowed through."

Confiscation "is very strongly connected with filtration," Lysianskyi said.

"That is, if someone is denied entry ... their data are immediately sent to the occupation administration, and this person quickly has his [or her] apartment taken away," he said.

This policy not only violates Ukrainians' rights but serves as a lever to strengthen occupation authorities' control, say analysts.

Demographic policy

Property confiscation has become a tool too for implementing Russia's demographic policy in occupied territory, critics note.

The occupation authorities are actively moving in Russians and displacing the local Ukrainian population.

Russian authorities transfer confiscated property to their own security personnel and civil servants or sell it to Russian citizens, the ISSS said.

"Russians who resettle in the occupied territories receive preferential credit, in particular loans at 2% per year," said Lysianskyi.

The rampant theft of real estate proves once again that Russia's occupation policy is more than military aggression, say observers: it is an attempt to destroy the Ukrainian identity, plunder resources and rewrite history.

"We understand perfectly well that in the occupied territories the lives of Ukrainians are worthless," said Fedorchuk. "And seeking recourse under some laws in effect in the occupation is very naive and dangerous."