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The Tribunal for Putin (T4P) global initiative was set up in response to the all-out war launched by Russia against Ukraine in February 2022.

Russia uses Sheremetyevo Airport ‘filtration’ to keep out Ukrainians and steal their homes in occupied Ukraine

28.06.2024   
Halya Coynash
Russia is imposing particularly restrictive measures against Ukrainians trying to reach their own homes in occupied Ukraine in order to appropriate their land
Image from RIA Melitopol
Image from RIA Melitopol

Ukrainians trying to return to their own homes in occupied parts of Ukraine are being forced to spend days at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow and undergo gruelling interrogation as part of Russia’s so-called ‘filtration’.  While many are banned from entry for providing truthful answers to questions about the war, occupied Crimea, etc, in some cases, other motives are at play.  The Russian FSB demand to know every minute detail about any property, buildings or land, that a person owns, and probably ban those with particularly choice real estate in order to appropriate it. 

RIA-Melitopol has spoken with Ukrainians from Melitopol who were forced to try to get home via Moscow and Sheremetyevo airport. They report that in the form they’re required to fill in, there are questions about property which need to be answered in exhaustive detail, even down to shares in relatives’ apartments.  “And, as a rule, the owners of particularly choice sites, such as shops or good apartments, are sent back [to where they flew in from]”.  The FSB check people’s answers about property with computer data, and any attempt to not mention something is likely to be found out and then used as pretext for immediate ‘deportation’.  There are grounds for believing, the publication says, that the FSB at Sheremetyevo have been given a list of the property which the invaders have set their eye on.

On just one day in March 2024, RIA Melitopol reported having learned of ten Melitopol residents who had been stripped of any possibility of keeping their property.  One man was openly laughed at when he said that he had to get back to rescue his 100 m² home which had been pronounced ‘ownerless’ in his absence.  RIA Melitopol notes that, among those refused entry, have been elderly people without social media accounts or any other kinds of activities that might rile the Russians.   The only thing that could have made them a target would seem to be the fact that they own property in occupied Melitopol.  Suspicion that the FSB are given lists of property to be appropriated is corroborated by the fact that virtually 100% of those trying to get to occupied Melitopol to establish their property rights to such purportedly ‘ownerless’ real estate are declared ‘undesirable’ and refused entry to RF and occupied Ukraine.  Since the occupying state has imposed draconian rules, making it impossible to give somebody else power of attorney over the property, such bans on entry effectively clinch the plunder of the Ukrainian owner’s property.

Since 16 October 2023, Russia has been imposing such restrictive measures on Ukrainians trying to reach their own homes in occupied Ukraine via European countries and Russian territory.  The only hope of reaching occupied territory is via Sheremetyevo, with Ukrainian citizens immediately taken aside and forced to fill in forms and undergo grilling by FSB officers.  Answer their questions ‘wrongly’ – that is, in full accordance with international law, but not in keeping with the aggressor state’s narrative – and you can be “banned from entering the RF” – and occupied Ukraine – for 10 years or more.

The aggressor state is imposing particularly draconian measures on occupied territory.  It is possible in Russia to own property as  a foreign national, yet in occupied Ukraine, Russia is making such ownership by Ukrainians of their own homes on Ukrainian territory ‘illegal’ without Russian registration, for which Russian citizenship is required.  It is clear from the experiences of those trying to return to occupied territory in the hope of not losing their property that Russia is not merely using such restrictions as a means of forcing Ukrainians to adopt Russian citizenship.  Measures aimed at changing the ethnic makeup of occupied territory are already in motion, with property appropriated from Ukrainians used as ‘incentive’.  See: Russia moves to change the ethnic makeup of occupied Ukraine by deporting Ukrainians and importing its own citizens

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