Migrants on their own land. What did Russia do with the occupied Donbass?
From January 1, 2025, the Kremlin considers Ukrainian citizens who live in the occupied territories, but have not taken Russian passports, to be migrants. This means that residents of Donetsk and Luhansk regions will lose their right to pensions and medical care and will be forced to ask the occupation authorities for permission even to live in their hometown or village. This is just one of the steps by which Russia implements its dictates on the occupied territories of Ukraine.
Donbas Realiy (Radio Liberty project) collected information about the lives of people under Russian occupation.
No water, up to the neck in garbage
"Donetsk, Makivka, Horlivka, Yasinuvata and Yenakieve will get water every day!" The occupying authorities made such a promise in May 2023 when they opened the new Don-Donbass water pipeline. But it's been a year and a half, and people are still lugging heavy canisters of water.
"Every day I walk, take one canister at a time as the water flows. But there's always no water downstairs either," complains 89-year-old Raisa Kovališin from Makivka to a reporter from a local propaganda TV channel that she has to carry water from the street to the third floor. The taps in her apartment have been dry for four months.
Residents of Makivk note that the problems began in 2022: before the start of the war, residents of occupied Donetsk received water from free Ukrainian territory. But during the fighting, the Russian army destroyed almost the entire infrastructure. Since then, water has been given on an hourly basis, once every few days. Although the rust-colored liquid flowing from the taps is difficult to call even technical water.
For the last two years, the administration under the control of the Russian Federation has not taken money for the "utility company" in Donetsk, Makiivka and six other cities of the occupied Donetsk region. And in August 2024, they announced that the moratorium is over: the municipality will have to pay for utility services regardless of their quality or even availability. After that, payment confirmations were sent - in addition, the fee was charged for several previous months.
Complaints do not help solve another communal problem - garbage.
Mountains of household waste are constantly growing on the streets of occupied Donetsk, which, as citizens complain, are not taken away for weeks and sometimes months.
"This pile is already two meters high. The authorities do not respond to complaints, the problem with taking out the garbage has not been solved for two whole years," the author of the videos on the social network was outraged.
Housing "was yours - became ours"
This year, thousands of residents of the occupied Donetsk region suddenly learned that their homes no longer belong to them.
"On April 7, I submitted the documents for re-registration of the apartment in the Russian registry. In 15 calendar days, when I came to collect my documents, I was served with a notice about the confiscation of my real estate," said Tetjana Trofimchuk, a resident of Donetsk, on social networks.
It turned out that at the end of September 2022, the "DPR" group quietly passed a resolution on the nationalization of housing. And according to local media, around 300,000 people lost the right to dispose of their real estate.
After a wave of anger reached Moscow, the occupation administration called it a "technical error" and promised to fix it. Once. Meanwhile, people are flooding the courts and service centers to get the foreclosures lifted.
But those who left the occupied territories really risk losing their houses and apartments. At the end of March, the groups "DPR" and "LPR" simultaneously adopted the so-called "laws on the nationalization of apartments for the homeless". Occupied apartments have been confiscated before, but this year the confiscation reached industrial proportions.
The occupying authorities find apartments where no one lives for more than a year and take them as "municipal property". However, they set a condition: the apartment will be returned if the owners come within three months, get a Russian passport and re-register the property in accordance with Russian laws.
In Mariupol, the occupation administration announced that the apartments of those who left will be distributed to those who stayed - as compensation. And new residential buildings, which were built on the site of houses bombed by the Russian army, are sold to immigrants from Russia.
"I had a two-room apartment where I lived for 40 years. And now they give me a one-room apartment, and that "I will have a dog". We have been homeless for two years. You don't consider people as people!", a pensioner scolded the local occupation administration at a rally in the summer of this year.
Desolation and ruins: "Russian world" has come to Avdijevka and Selidove
In February 2024, Avdijivka came under Russian control. For four months, the Russian army attacked, shelled tanks and artillery, threw anti-aircraft and phosphorus bombs.
On February 17, 2024, Ukrainian troops were forced to withdraw from the city. Before the war, 30,000 people lived here. After the occupation, according to the data of the National Police in the Donetsk region, about 700 people remained in the city.
"A direct hit destroyed the first entrance, and the child was hidden in the second. And then he entered the third entrance and then he "made it". And everything has burned, we have absolutely nothing," said a resident of Avdiyivka in an interview with Russian propaganda media in November.
They came to film the leader of the "DNR" group, Denis Pushilin, handing over the keys to the apartments to several people. While ruins could be seen in the background, he boasted that Russian
builders had repaired one entrance. And in a month - he came to the same yard again and brought a Christmas tree. He said, "to make it more fun in the New Year".
"Spies, saboteurs and traitors": repression of civilians intensified during the occupation
In the occupied territories, the occupiers "evict" the disloyal. Almost every week, videos are published on social networks of the arrest and trial of yet another "spy" or "saboteur", who then confesses on camera what he "did".
“It could be a staged video, it could be real people. Real people who were previously beaten, who were tortured, who had their relatives as hostages, who were raped, who were tortured," Volodymyr Shcherbachenko, head of the East Ukraine Center for Public Initiatives, told Donbass Realia.
But the sentences "stamped" by the so-called "courts of the LNR and DNR" are real and significant: 13, 18, and even 23 years behind bars.
One can go to prison for five to seven years even for an anti-war comment or like on social media. The occupiers keep an eye on the posts and quickly exclude authors, accusing them of "invoking terrorism" or "discrediting the Russian military."
According to data from the Eastern Human Rights Group, from May to July 2024, 289 people were detained in the occupied territories for comments on social networks.
Overall, according to the Center for Civil Liberties, up to 60,000 Ukrainian civilians may be held captive by the occupiers.
"Foreigners" in their own home: how the occupiers force Ukrainians to take Russian passports
The occupation authorities decided to "tighten the screws" on those who offered passive resistance and did not take Russian citizenship.
As of January 1, 2025, residents of the Russian-occupied Ukrainian Donbas who have not taken Russian passports have the status of "foreigners" or "stateless persons." This will lead to the fact that local residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions will have to register for migration and obtain a residence permit.
In addition, they must obtain a work permit and pay twice as much income tax as "citizens of Russia". Pensions and social benefits will be paid to the newly created "migrants" too old.
According to Aljona Lunjova, director of representation at the Center for Human Rights ZMINA, the occupiers resort to coercion due to the fact that there are not so many among the locals who are willing to voluntarily become Russian citizens.
"From 2022, the Russians are constantly simplifying the procedure for acquiring citizenship, and on the other hand, they are constantly introducing restrictions: on employment, obtaining diplomas, social benefits, medical assistance. We know such facts that people were denied hospitalization and help because they did not have Russian passports," Lunyova told Donbass Reali.
"Taking passports under duress is a violation of international law. It is also part of Russia's broader strategy to change the demographic composition of the occupied territories," believes the Center of National Resistance.
Decay and destruction of infrastructure, increased repression and pressure on the population - this is how another year of Russian occupation in the Ukrainian Donbas has ended.