By Kontur | 2025-08-06

In Mariupol, the sound of drills and concrete mixers competes with the crash of waves from the nearby Sea of Azov. For Russian newcomers, it is a city of opportunity: fresh seaside apartments, low‑interest mortgages and the promise of a revitalized port. For many Ukrainians who once lived here, it is a personal tragedy and a closed door.

Two years after Russian forces seized Mariupol, the city's real estate market has been rewired. The Kremlin and its allies are using property sales to accelerate a demographic shift, enticing buyers from across Russia while sidelining former Ukrainian residents through layers of legal and bureaucratic barriers.

New rules

The rules are straightforward for newcomers: possess a Russian passport, have the funds, often in cash, and be ready to navigate a newly built system of municipal service centers. For original residents, the process is far more complex. They must replace Ukrainian property documents with Russian ones; without them, an owner may not sell, rent or even officially reclaim his or her home.

"Now the sale of real estate [in the so‑called 'new territories'] is possible only with Russian citizenship… You may not sell with Ukrainian documents," Mariupol real estate agent Tatyana Malevan said in a blog post last September.

It is part of a wider policy shift codified by Moscow. In June, Russia's State Duma passed legislation recognizing only those pre‑annexation Ukrainian property titles issued before Russia incorporated the territories. Anything dated later is invalid.

Regional commissions will now decide which documents meet the standard, a process critics say creates ample room for selective enforcement.

For those with the right papers, Moscow has sweetened the deal. Buyers in Mariupol may access mortgages at just 2% interest, a rate rarely seen in Russia's broader housing market.

"Russians, military personnel and certain categories of [customers] may buy apartments on a mortgage but only in new buildings," agent Svetlana Nalyotova said.

Many of those new buildings sit on land once occupied by Ukrainian dwellings. In some cases, puppet authorities have properties "ownerless" and transferred them to municipal ownership under a law passed in the self‑proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic in March 2024. In August 2024, Mariupol's official list of such properties contained more than 4,000 entries.

Ignored warnings

The Kremlin calls this reconstruction. To some local agents, it is market momentum.

"People are actively moving to Mariupol from the Far East, Siberia, the North… They fall in love with the city and mild climate and bring their families here," Luiza Nalivai, director of Mariupol's Ayaks real estate agency, told Kazan First in July 2024.

The rush continues despite years of warnings from legal scholars about hidden hazards. Tatyana Poberey, a Moscow‑area property specialist, compared the situation to Crimea in the years after its annexation.

"It's very difficult to check the ownership history of this property… there is no guarantee that a previous owner won't show up," she advised potential buyers in an interview with Argumenty i Fakty in July 2023.

Economic incentives sweeten the pot for buyers willing to take the risk. In central Mariupol, prices for new construction reached 130,000 RUB (about $1,600) per square meter last year-- comparable to Russian cities like Rostov or Novosibirsk -- while older, damaged units in prime areas still command up to 100,000 RUB (some $1,200) per square meter. A two‑room apartment in a good district could sell for 5 million RUB (about $62,500).

Paper barriers

In this buying surge, analysts see echoes of Soviet‑era population policies that moved ethnic Russians into strategic areas.

For displaced Ukrainians, reclaiming property is becoming nearly impossible. Travel restrictions, shifting local laws and Russia's refusal to recognize newer Ukrainian documents combine to keep many out.

When one former Mariupol resident's mother attempted to return to claim compensation, Russian authorities turned her back at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport without explanation, the Wall Street Journal reported in August.

Back in Mariupol, the visible signs of change are unmistakable. New apartment blocks rise where rubble once stood. Billboards promise a "new life by the sea." And on the city's Telegram real estate channels, listings increasingly come from buyers hundreds of kilometers away.

Real estate agent Oksana, who declined to give her last name, summed up the dynamic in the Kazan First interview.

"Prices for one‑room apartments are up to three million [RUB, meaning $37,452] … All types of housing are in demand, from apartments and houses to land plots," she said.

Whether the wave of property sales means permanent settlement or a speculative bubble, its political function is already clear: bricks, mortar and mortgages are now tools of occupation policy.

For Moscow, each apartment sold to a Russian citizen in Mariupol or other occupied territories is a stake in a contested landscape, a way to make its hold on Ukraine feel less like a battlefield.