Colonization under the guise of reconstruction: Russia resettles Russians in destroyed cities of Ukraine

Russia is settling temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine with ethnic Russians. Companies linked to the Kremlin are profiting from the reconstruction of housing destroyed by the occupiers.

This was reported in The Wall Street Journal.

“In the occupied territory, the authorities have declared thousands of apartments “ownerless”, as a result of which Ukrainians who fled have faced obstacles in returning, confirming ownership, or receiving compensation. At the same time, visitors from Russia enjoy a number of benefits, such as a 2% mortgage rate on new homes,” the material says.

One example is occupied Mariupol. The destruction and flight of Ukrainians from the city opened up a real estate market. Realtors bought up properties cheaply from residents who had fled the city to escape the war.

One of the “new arrivals”, a Russian woman from Siberia, said she bought an apartment in the city and plans to retire there. For now, she said she will rent it to a tenant – a Muscovite who now lives and works in Mariupol.

Local residents who applied for new apartments in the buildings under construction learned that they no longer had the right to move to the location of their former homes, but had the right to move anywhere in the city. In this way, the Russians effectively forced them out of the “bread” areas of the city in order to sell apartments there to Russians.

Olena Pudak, a resident of occupied Mariupol, told the WSJ how her mother tried to return to the city to receive compensation for her apartment in the “Clock House”.

She was denied entry at Russia’s Sheremetyevo Airport without explanation, but Pudak suspects the authorities are trying to keep people with property claims out.

It was previously reported that the water crisis in the occupied Donetsk region has reached a critical level, with water being supplied there only once every few days or not at all, and the situation is only getting worse .

As a reminder, Mariupol may be left without drinking water due to the critical shallowing of its only reservoir .

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