cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/44761574

Ukrainians forced out of their homes by the Russian military now face the prospect of permanent loss of their property under a new Russian law. Signed by Vladimir Putin on December 15, 2025, Federal Law No. 518-FЗ authorizes Russian authorities in illegally annexed Ukrainian territories (the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson) to seize, through 2030, any property deemed “ownerless.”

To be legally recognized as the owner of real estate in an occupied territory, one must hold Russian citizenship and have re-registered property with the occupying authorities. For a Ukrainian, obtaining Russian citizenship takes about two years.

Seized properties become the possession of municipalities or regional governments and, according to the law, are to be redistributed to Russians who lost their homes “as a result of acts of aggression against the Russian Federation.” The Russian legislature is thereby reversing the roles, depicting the plunderer as the victim.

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Law No. 518-F3 violates Article 46 of the international regulations concerning the laws and customs of war, annexed to the Fourth Hague Convention of 1907, which prohibits the appropriation of private property in occupied territories.

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In doing this, the Russian occupiers have formalized a practice observed since the start of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022: the plundering of property by local military or collaborationist authorities. Used in a chaotic and arbitrary manner, this practice primarily targeted the property of Ukrainians identified as hostile because they were politically or militarily engaged on the side of Kyiv.

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To speed up the expropriation process, Denis Pushilin, head of the self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic,” called on residents as early as December 9, 2025 (the day the law was adopted by the Russian Parliament), to “report vacant homes to the authorities.” The largest “redistribution” will take place in Mariupol, the biggest Ukrainian city captured by Russian forces since 2022.

This port on the Sea of Azov, formerly home to 400,000 people, endured three months of siege and Russian bombardment, resulting in around 50,000 deaths, according to Petro Andriushchenko, former adviser to the ex-mayor of Mariupol. He estimated that 75,000 apartments became uninhabitable, with half permanently destroyed (493 buildings). Occupying authorities have so far rebuilt 5,500 homes, but according to Andriushchenko, 22,000 Mariupol residents remain without housing.

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Andriushchenko sees the expropriation law as part of a quiet plan for ethnic cleansing. “Within five years, there will be no more Ukrainian residents in Mariupol and it is for this purpose that the Russians are redistributing the housing stock. This is an unprecedented seizure of property since the end of the World War II and Ukrainians have no recourse to seek compensation.”

In a statement, the Ukrainian foreign ministry noted that “Russia aims to change the demographic composition of the occupied territories by replacing locals with Russian citizens,” and “condemns [a law] designed to strip Ukrainian citizens en masse of [their] property. Russia has identified itself as a bandit state.”

Law No. 518-FЗ is part of a long history of mass expropriations with an ethnic dimension. After the first annexation of Crimea in 1783, Empress Catherine II expelled the Tatars and the Nogai people, allocating their lands to settlers to Russify the peninsula. In the 1930s, Stalin caused a catastrophic famine (the Holodomor, which killed between three and four million people) and orchestrated the mass deportation of Ukrainian peasants from the Donbas to Siberia to repopulate the region with workers from across the Soviet Union. The list of tragedies is far from complete, and Moscow clearly wants to see it lengthen.

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