Russia is clearly changing the demographic situation in occupied Mariupol while finding new excuses for escalating the suffering of residents who have already lost almost everything
Mariupol residents who received some kind of ‘compensation housing’ for the homes which Russia destroyed in 2022 now face losing even this. The occupying state is, in flagrant violation of international law, demanding that the Ukrainians take Russian citizenship and register the property in Russia’s land register. This, together with other brutal measures against residents who have lost almost everything, is taking place against a background of intensive ‘property development’ on the land where people’s homes stood, with the new buildings aimed solely at a Russian market.
The Mariupol City Council reported on 15 August that the occupation ‘administration’ has come up with another plan for expropriating property. Where Mariupol residents received so-called ‘compensation’, the occupation regime intend to ‘suspend their property rights to their destroyed homes and, where the homes were on private land, also the rights to the land. It seems extremely unlikely that the owners received compensation even remotely comparable to the value of their property, yet they will be given six months to come forth and, essentially, hand over their property rights. After that, they will be taken forcibly by going through local occupation ‘courts’.
The occupation ‘Mariupol administration’ have also announced that they are revoking 21 ‘decisions to provide compensation housing’ on the grounds that the people allocated it have not taken on Russian citizenship and have not registered the property as ‘Russian’. Around one hundred earlier decisions will also be scrutinized and, presumably, may be annulled for the same reason. The aggressor state which mercilessly bombed and shelled Mariupol, destroying inhabitants’ homes is thus refusing to provide any compensation for the devastation they caused unless the owners of the damaged buildings agree to take the invaders’ citizenship. This, in the case of men within the age range currently applied in Russia, means that they are subject to conscription and, possibly, mobilization.
It should be stressed that the occupation authorities do not, in fact, have the right to ‘allocate’ this so-called compensation housing which in most, if not all, situations is likely to be property which has owners. Most often, these are people who fled because of the Russian invasion. Judging by the terrible experiences people are having at Sheremetyevo airport, even those who wish to return to Mariupol may not be able to. There are, in fact, grounds for suspecting that the FSB have lists of particularly choice property and block their owners from returning to occupied territory. People return, even temporarily, for various reasons, including the need to see or care for elderly or ill relatives. Although understandable that people do not want to lose their property, any attempt by Ukrainians to cross into occupied territory, take Russian citizenship and re-register the property according to Russian legislation puts them at risk on occupied territory. Many have already been abducted and then sentenced to huge terms of imprisonment on supposed ‘spying’, ‘treason’ or ‘sabotage’ charges. There have also been cases where the Russians have claimed that property is ‘ownerless’ even when its owner took Russian citizenship.
All of this appropriation and ‘allocation’ of other Ukrainians’ property is in grave breach of Ukrainian and international law and will, ultimately, be deemed null and void.
The fact that the Russian invaders are taking away even the meagre compensation people received and threatening to ‘re-allocate’ appropriated property seems especially cynical given the number of people who have been left with nothing while their land was handed to Russian developers. A huge number of residents remain in rented accommodation or in apartment blocks that have still not received proper repairs after the damage Russia wrought.
The Mariupol City Council also reported on 13 August that Denys Pushilin, the Russian-installed ‘leader’ of the so-called ‘Donetsk people’s republic’, had signed yet another document ‘handing over’ plots of land to Russian developers. They are planning to build new apartment blocks on the place of severely damaged, and then demolished, buildings. The new apartment blocks are not for the residents whose homes were destroyed by Russian bombs, but to be sold, with Russians offered special, advantageous mortgage interest deals. After the devastation which Russia caused in 2022, it is very unlikely that the Ukrainians remaining in Mariupol would have the money to ‘buy’ what should be theirs by right.
“While the occupiers hand out Mariupol land to Russian developers, thousands of Mariupol residents remain without their own homes. Their buildings have been demolished and repairs of the remaining apartment blocks have been ‘frozen’.”
It became clear almost immediately after the Russians seized control of Mariupol that the moves, especially in the centre, to bring in developers and build apartment blocks had nothing whatsoever to do with rebuilding the homes of those who had lost them. Residents tried desperately to stop the buildings being demolished as it meant that they would lose everything, including the land. The latter, especially in chose locations, near the centre, would be used to entice investors from Russia or allocated to the FSB and others brought in to control the population from Russia.
Kira Sokolova, writing for Deutsche Welle’s Ukrainian Service, asked who is buying apartments in occupied Mariupol and presented her findings for the complex called ‘Leningradsky Quarter’. People have already moved in and chat with one another on particular social media pages. Judging by these messages, it appears that the majority are not local and ask questions like how to get furniture delivered from Russia. Some have clearly bough the apartments for themselves, others to let. Prices have shot up, although the quality of building work is very low, with developers looking for easy profit. The same has been true from the outset with any of the repairs that were done to buildings badly damaged by Russian bombing.
Nobody knows the real number of deaths caused by Russia’s siege of Mariupol, however all of the people with whom Deutsche Welle spoke recounted seeing neighbours killed or injured. All of this is quite deliberate. It was suspected from the outset that the haste with which Russia started building a ‘new’ drama theatre was in order to hide the scale of its crime. Up to 600 people are believed to have been killed when Russia dropped two massive bombs on the Drama Theatre on 16 March 2022, despite knowing that the building was being used as a shelter by over a thousand civilians, most women, children and the elderly. Yevhen Sosnovsky, who now lives in Kyiv, but survived the bombing and shelling around Metallurgist Avenue, is convinced that the Russians are “building on bones, and as quickly as they can so as to bury the evidence of their crimes”.
All of the new construction and influx of Russians coincides with aggressive propaganda and indoctrination measures by the occupying regime, with Russia effectively ‘rewriting’ the history to blot out its crimes, or attribute them to Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
See also:
Russia moves to cut already pitiful level of compensation for the homes it destroyed in Mariupol
Mariupol only for the invaders. Russia changes street names to totally plunder Ukrainian owners
‘Nowhere but the cemetery': Russia destroys Mariupol and plunders land, leaving residents homeless
Mariupol residents whose apartments Russia bombed left homeless as new buildings sold to Russians
Russians brought into occupied Mariupol in hordes, with Ukrainians treated as second-class citizens
