Russia moves to cut already pitiful level of compensation for the homes it destroyed in Mariupol

The Russian occupation ‘authorities’ in Mariupol claim ‘to have completed’ issue of accommodation to compensate that destroyed during the first months of Russia’s full-scale invasion.  The claim that the process is 94% complete seems especially cynical given that the invaders’ own ‘official’ data indicate that only around 4.5 thousand apartments have been allocated. Over 52 thousand homes were destroyed or badly damaged during Russia’s relentless bombing and shelling of the city in early 2022. 

The Mariupol City Council reported on 4 January that the Russians were claiming to have completed the ‘compensation process’ by 94%.  This is also highly specific ‘compensation’ as the occupiers have already stated that they will be ‘allocating’ property that they have expropriated, claiming it to have been ‘abandoned’.

Among the excuses used by the occupation regime for refusing to provide any compensation is that a person has ‘other property’, even if the latter is destroyed, a share in something, etc.   Knowing that they will automatically be refused desperately needed accommodation in compensation, people conceal such supposed additional property.  According to the Mariupol Council, such concealment is, in turn, being used by the occupation regime for mass prosecutions over alleged ‘fraud’, with people facing sentences of up to ten years.

Another ploy is to change the legal address of a destroyed building, with this meaning that residents are stripped of the legal grounds for compensation.  As reported, Russia’s forced change of many street names caused concern earlier, with property owners fearful that they would be unable to prove that they owned their own homes.

It is clear, both from the Mariupol Council’s report and from the constant protests by desperate residents, that there are compelling grounds for such concerns.  As the Council notes, the invaders want to put an end to questions of compensation and concentrate on building accommodation sold on a mortgage basis, with these essentially for Russians.  Locals who have lost everything would not have the money to ‘buy’ such property, often illegally built on the land where their homes stood until Russia bombed and destroyed them.  The Council is doubtless correct that Russia is happy to bring in Russians to speed up its illegal attempts to ‘Russify’ occupied Ukrainian territory. 

It is unclear how much other devastated cities, especially in Luhansk oblast, are being rebuilt at all and whether people are receiving any compensation.  We know, however, that on all territory seized after Russia’s full-scale invasion, the invaders have systematically set about plundering property that it claims has no owners.  This is usually the property of those who fled the invasion, however there have been reports that Russia is also demanding that people register their property under Russian legislation.  This, in turn, they can only do by taking Russian citizenship.

Kyiv has long recognized that Ukrainians on occupied territory who take Russian citizenship in order to survive act under duress and cannot be penalized for this.  This might not be so clear-cut in the case of people who returned to occupied territory in order to try to save their property.  In fact, Russia is, in any case, making it extremely hard for Ukrainians to return to their own homes, with the number of people stopped at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow high and rising.  Any Ukrainian who does manage to return could end up arrested, with the FSB, for example, always ready to claim to have caught ‘a spy’ working for Ukraine, etc.

In its latest monitoring report, OHCHR has noted Russia’s expropriation of property on occupied territory, and ‘laws’ introduced in occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.  Russia is an occupying state and is prohibited, under international humanitarian law, from confiscating private property. It is just as illegal, under international law, to force Ukrainians on occupied territory to take Russian citizenship, with the methods of coercion used involving  the threat that, otherwise, a person will lose the right to their own property.