Russia is aggressively replacing people in annexed Crimea and other occupied territories of Ukraine

Russian authorities are seizing housing from residents of occupied Ukrainian regions, forcing them to obtain Russian passports, and working hard with Ukrainian youth.

Since the occupation and annexation of Crimea by Russia and the start of the “hybrid” war in Donbass, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar human rights activists have repeatedly reported that the Russian authorities are, in fact, displacing the disloyal population, replacing them with people from the Russian hinterland.

This includes not only direct repression for pro-Ukrainian positions, but also indirect methods of pressure, for example, campaigns against Crimean doctors, cutting salaries for local specialists, and so on. Russian immigrants are coming to replace them.

According to the leader of the Crimean Tatars Mustafa Dzhemilev, in the first 3.5 years of annexation alone, 550 thousand Russians and immigrants from Donbass moved to the peninsula. The policy of settling the occupied territories with loyal Russians is being pursued by Moscow and the Donbass. According to local residents, people are being fired en masse from enterprises, forcing them to go abroad to work, and in their place are hired newcomers from distant Siberian villages who dreamed of moving to a big city.

However, since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, such policies in the occupied territories have become much stricter. For example, in Mariupol, in addition to the destruction brought by the war, which deprived many Ukrainians of a roof over their heads, the Russian administration is taking away even the surviving housing from local residents. This is done through the procedure of declaring the property “ownerless.”

This applies even to absolutely habitable housing that has a legal owner and does not have any debt on utility bills.

To prove their ownership, owners need to appear in person at the city administration, and also renounce Ukrainian citizenship in favor of Russian.

However, officials do not accept any powers of attorney or documents. If the owners do not have time to prove their rights within a month, they can only do this in court, however, even for this it is necessary to renounce Ukrainian citizenship and obtain Russian citizenship. Accordingly, people for whom this is unacceptable are deprived of their last housing and are therefore forced to leave the city.

Residents of Mariupol, who were evacuated to Russia in 2022, also for the most part cannot return back. As journalists report, many of them are forced to live in temporary accommodation centers in Russia for months and even years, since they were never provided with the promised new housing to replace the destroyed one. Residents of Mariupol report that houses with a mortgage have already been built on the site of their former housing, but nothing has been given to the displaced people.

Meanwhile, Russians are actively moving to the city to replace the former residents. Propaganda, for its part, actively encourages people to invest money in destroyed housing, assuring that it is very profitable.

At the beginning of last year, investigators managed to obtain manuals sent by Russian officials to propaganda media. One of them was entirely devoted to the material benefits from the “annexation of new territories.” The exact number of Russians who moved to Mariupol during the war years is unknown, but according to rough estimates by Ukrainian officials, their number is about 8 thousand people.

In addition to the physical displacement of former residents of Mariupol and attempts to “entice” new people to take their place, the Russian authorities are actively working with Ukrainian youth remaining in the occupied territories.

The leader of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, personally designated education as a “key link in education” – especially in the so-called “new regions”. His concerns are shared by Russian officials. Thus, the “ombudsman for children’s rights” from the Russian Federation in annexed Sevastopol, Marina Peschanskaya, complained that children from the Zaporіzhzhіа and Kherson regions were “raised to hate Russia,” and therefore “it is necessary to work with them to reformat their thinking.”

And indeed, in addition to the programs for indoctrination of children existing throughout Russia, a special project called “Navigators of Childhood” was created for the occupied regions. The position of advisers to educational directors was introduced in schools in the Russian-occupied parts of Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporіzhzhіа and Kherson regions.

The director of the Russian Children and Youth Center, Alexander Kudryashov, called the result of their work the raising of the bar of patriotism, the formation of school communities, volunteer groups, the creation of military-patriotic clubs, the opening of branches of the “Youth Army” and the Children and Youth Movement.

Indeed, units of the so-called “Youth Army” have been operating in the occupied territories of Ukraine since 2014, and their activities have expanded since 2022. According to open data, in the occupied part of Ukraine about 40 thousand children and teenagers have already become members of the Yunarmiya. According to human rights activist and head of the Almenda Center for Civic Education Maria Sulyalina, at least 27,243 of them live in Crimea and Sevastopol.

Journalists found out that in Crimea and the occupied part of Donbass, the main headquarters of the movement are headed by local collaborators who have participated in the war against Ukraine since 2014.

Young Army members are engaged in combat, combat and sports training, study weapons and, in fact, prepare for service in the Russian army. Journalists managed to find at least several former Ukrainians who, having gone through the Youth Army, actually began to fight against their former homeland in the ranks of the Russian army. The most talented children are sometimes brought to the Russian elite educational center “Sirius”, where “military-patriotic education” is also actively carried out.

The Ukrainian authorities, in turn, consider the involvement of Ukrainian children in the activities of the Yunarmiya as a violation of the laws and customs of war and a justification for Russian armed aggression. In June of this year, the Security Service of Ukraine reported suspicion to the head of the Yunarmiya headquarters in annexed Crimea, Sergei Gavrilchuk, and referred the case to court. However, it is already obvious today that the consequences of such population replacement and forced indoctrination of young people can last for decades.

The Russian full-scale military invasion of Ukraine has been ongoing since the morning of February 24, 2022. Russian troops are conducting airstrikes against key military and civilian infrastructure, destroying airfields, military units, oil depots, gas stations, churches, schools and hospitals. Shelling of residential areas is carried out using artillery, multiple launch rocket systems and ballistic missiles.

A number of Western countries, including the US and EU countries, have tightened sanctions against Russia and condemned Russian military actions in Ukraine.

Russia denies that it is waging a war of conquest against Ukraine on its territory and calls it a “special operation” that aims to “demilitarize and denazify.”