Russian propaganda is actively spreading advertisements for the sale of housing in occupied Mariupol. A video can be found online where a “realtor” talks about comfortable accommodation in Mariupol apartments destroyed by Russian missiles, where Ukrainians had recently lived. And a Russian journalist for the German ZDF says that in Mariupol “everything is not so bad — the city is being actively rebuilt”. Slidstvo.Info journalists collected testimonies from Mariupol residents about the real situation with housing in the occupied city. According to the locals, housing in Mariupol can be declared “ownerless” and re-registered to Russian citizens, sold or moved into by other people.
This is reported in a video by Slidstvo.Info. The video has English subtitles.
“THE HOUSE IS BEING TAKEN OVER BY THE “DPR”
Ukrainian businesswoman Yana bought her house in Mariupol in 2019. She was attracted by the location — on Tahanrog road, near a convenient transport interchange. Shortly before the full-scale invasion, she renovated the house and painted it with yellow and blue butterflies for her birthday.
Mariupol entrepreneur Yana
On 24 February 2022, Yana’s family woke up to loud explosions. An enemy shell hit a neighbouring house, and the shelling became so intense that the family did not leave the basement. A few weeks later, they managed to leave the city.
In April, Yana found out that her house had been shelled and the roof had been blown off by an aerial bomb.
Neighbours told her that the ‘Kadyrovites’ were taking away her property in armoured personnel carriers: freezers, a refrigerator and other household appliances. In the end, her house was looted, leaving almost nothing behind.
“For a long time we had no information about the house at all. Until neighbours started coming back to our street… They called me on Viber. They said that a commission was visiting, and that we had to come with our documents by 28 November to confirm our ownership,” Yana recalls.
It is dangerous for Yana and her family to return to the occupation — Ukrainians will be forced to go through “filtration” and obtain Russian citizenship.
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- Yana’s house before an enemy shell hit
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- Yana’s house after an enemy shell hit
“In December, I sent a photo and a copy of the documents to my neighbours. And they said that the house is subject to alienation. That is, it is being taken over by the ‘DPR’ (so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic”, an occupation puppet regime established by the Russian Federation on the territory occupied by it in certain areas of the Donetsk region of Ukraine — transl.). And if I want to, we can move to Mariupol by 2026, and maybe we will be compensated for it. But the land has already been appropriated by the DPR. That is, the land is no longer mine, although it has been privatised. The house will be demolished and a shop will be built in its place,” says Yana.
While her home is under occupation, she and her family live in Rivne.
“Rivne is not my home. And despite the fact that I left the city (Mariupol — ed.) almost two years ago, when I tell my husband that I want to go home, he understands what I mean. When you live in someone else’s home, you don’t have a sense of security,” says Yana.
“THEY REALLY LIKED YOUR APARTMENT”
Halyna, a teacher in Mariupol, left the occupation with her husband and children in March 2022. Her apartment was hit by a shell, but the house remained intact. The windows were smashed, but the walls and ceiling were intact.
Halyna’s face is covered for security reasons
A month after the rescue, a neighbour contacted Halyna and asked her to send the keys to her apartment.
“Our aquarium at home was frozen, there was ice in it, and we kept food there. When we left, the food started to stink. Then the neighbours asked me to give them the keys. Also, representatives of the so-called administration started visiting the apartments and demanding access to allegedly check the electricity,” Halyna explains.
After Halyna sent the keys to her neighbour, representatives of the occupation administration came to her apartment, allegedly to check the apartment. The neighbour let the occupiers in because she was threatened.
“So she said: “I was threatened. They said that if you don’t let us in, we will enter the apartment ourselves, so you better let us in.” Then my neighbour wrote to me that “they really liked your apartment,” Halyna recalls.
The occupiers said they wanted to temporarily accommodate there construction workers from St Petersburg.
“You’d better agree and not start a conflict with us, because we don’t know who lives here and what their views are. You don’t want us to deal with all this, do you? What kind of people lived here, whether they were loyal to us,” Halyna recounts the words of the occupation administration.
The builders eventually stole Halyna’s belongings and left. Instead, the so-called administration moved a woman with three children into her apartment.
“My kuma (her child’s godmother, or her godchild’s mother — transl.) said that ‘you understand that you are here temporarily’. And she (the settled woman — ed.) said: “I am not here temporarily, I was given this apartment, I have three children. It doesn’t matter who lived here and what happened, this is my apartment now.” That’s what they were saying. And then the woman wouldn’t let my relative into the apartment anymore,” Halyna says.
Later, this woman also left the apartment, as Halyna was told, “for the sea”. A few weeks ago, her neighbours called her and asked her to come back to the city, because other people were living in her apartment: “‘Halyna, come and sell your apartment. Because there are things going on here, you don’t know who lives here, there’s noise, there’s a lot of noise, there’s screaming at night.”
Now Halyna and her family are on the territory controlled by Ukraine and do not want to take any risks by going to the Russian-occupied city
“We have been living there (in Mariupol — ed.) since 2000, which is actually 24 years. We made repairs just before the full-scale invasion, and bought new furniture. It’s a pity, of course… But someone chooses an apartment, and someone chooses Ukraine. We chose Ukraine,” says Halyna.
“PEOPLE ARE DEPRIVED OF HOUSING IN TWO WAYS”
Petro Andriushchenko, an advisor to the mayor of Mariupol, says there are two ways in which people are deprived of their homes. The first is when the occupation administration recognises someone else’s home as “ownerless”.
“That is, an inventory is carried out, it is constantly ongoing. In fact, the property is classified as so-called “ownerless”, and then it becomes the property of the so-called DPR,” explains Andriushchenko.
Petro Andriushchenko, advisor to the mayor of Mariupol
The second method is corrupt. It implies that anyone can re-register someone else’s housing for bribes to the collaborationist authorities.
“And that’s it, you’re like the owner and you do what you want. It’s the same looting, but at a lower level. It is impossible without the participation of the occupation administration and our collaborators,” says Petro Andriushchenko.
Different people are responsible for the alienation of housing. In order to take away Yana’s house, the occupiers first needed information that no one else lived there. This issue was taken care of by the city’s ” block officers” — people who were responsible for a particular area of the district, provided certificates and kept records of residents.
Yana’s house is located in the Left Bank district of the city. According to the information published by the occupiers themselves, there are more than two dozen “block officers” in the area.
Olha Khmyz was responsible for Yana’s house at the time of its alienation and recognition as “ownerless”. Prior to the full-scale invasion, Olha held a similar position in the Naydenivka Self-Organisation Committee.
Mariupol collaborator Olha Khmyz
After the occupation of the city by Russians, she went over to the enemy and began working as a “block officer” in the so-called Taganrog Committee of Self-Organisation of the Population. Yana’s house was also in her area of responsibility.
According to local residents, the information from the “block officers” is then passed on to the heads of the so-called district administrations. There are four of them in Mariupol, each headed by collaborators.
The so-called head of the ‘Left Bank District Administration’, or ‘Ordzhonikidze’ as it is called by the occupiers, is Ihor Ovsiyenko.
According to Petro Andriushchenko, the occupation local administration in occupied Mariupol, headed by the “head” of the city, Oleh Morgun, is currently electing a commission that will recognise the housing as “ownerless”. According to the occupation administration, as of last month, there were 177 such properties in Mariupol.
The so-called leadership of the city is subordinate to the leader of the terrorist “DPR”, Denis Pushilin. Then this branch stretches to the top leadership of the Russian Federation.
“The eviction of indigenous Mariupol residents from the city and its settlement by ethnic Russians is roughly the same story that happened in the 1930s (XX century — ed.) in the entire Donetsk Oblast… If the occupation continues for another 10 years, it will be very difficult for Ukraine to return not the territory itself, but the mental population. Because there will already be “mixed” marriages (these are “mixed” children) who will feel like Russians,” Yana reflects.
There are thousands of similar stories in Mariupol. Ukrainians who were forced to leave their homes are now homeless.
While Russian propaganda talks about the frantic pace of construction and advertises life under occupation to the world, Ukrainians know the real cost of this.
