Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:26Your call will be answered by the first available operator. While abroad,
00:00:30trying to determine the fate of their real estate and regain ownership,
00:00:34Ekaterina and Valeriy call the Russian
00:00:38occupation zone. "What country are you a citizen of?"
00:00:40"Ukraine."
00:00:44It's difficult here, of course. On the other end of the line is an official
00:00:47from the Rosreestr branch, a state body that records
00:00:51real estate in Russia. This is how Valeriy is answered regarding new
00:00:55tenants in his family's apartment. "These are military personnel. If
00:00:58they're military, well, then there's nothing you can do." Conducting an investigation
00:01:02into public and non-public actions by Russian authorities in the occupied
00:01:06territories of Ukraine, we counted at least six
00:01:09schemes by which property is illegally seized, in violation of international conventions,
00:01:13from those who rightfully owned it. What
00:01:17are these schemes? How do they work? Who is
00:01:19involved? Based on facts from primary sources—decisions,
00:01:23orders, documents, decrees from the Kremlin—we will show the scale
00:01:26of what is happening, and explain how the seizure of apartments, houses, and plots
00:01:31of land, theft, and looting in the captured territories
00:01:34became
00:01:35systematic.
00:01:38Valeriy's mother, he himself, and his brother Vitaliy are natives of the Luhansk
00:01:42region of Ukraine. The city of Severodonetsk was occupied
00:01:45twice: first in 2014, the occupation
00:01:48lasted two and a half months, then a new
00:01:51occupation from June 2022.
00:01:55They fled the war as a whole family. There are so many
00:01:58graves near the entrance.
00:02:00People were buried right next to their
00:02:03homes, directly in the
00:02:05gardens. This is a terrible
00:02:09situation. In 2022, during the capture of the city by Russian
00:02:12troops, 90% of the housing stock in Severodonetsk was damaged or destroyed.
00:02:16This information is confirmed by international
00:02:19organizations. About thirty multi-story buildings cannot
00:02:22be restored. The Olenchek family's apartment miraculously
00:02:25survived. "This is my childhood apartment, for me, for my
00:02:28brother. I was brought here from the maternity hospital." That same
00:02:32photograph, taken in the apartment, when Valeriy was brought from the maternity hospital in
00:02:361972. And this is a little later, during
00:02:40a walk near the house in a baby carriage. And this photo
00:02:43was taken in March 1990 at the Severodonetsk House of Culture.
00:02:47Valeriy did ballroom dancing as a child. Here are the brothers,
00:02:51still preschoolers, with their father. Their mother took the photo in
00:02:54that very apartment. "Well, this is not just our apartment, it's our
00:02:58place of power before... Naimushtabka just
00:03:01renovated it for mom, put in new furniture.
00:03:04Yes,
00:03:07and I think it will be a surprise for her when she
00:03:10comes there again. It wasn't meant to be.
00:03:14It was a horror. My aunt, when she was
00:03:17there, said, "Let me at least see. Katya has a good
00:03:20piano with silver strings." Valeriy used to play
00:03:24it there. "No, we're cutting herring
00:03:28on it there already."
00:04:02you need to get a special permit for
00:04:05registration from the collegial body. And
00:04:09if such a permit is issued, then Ukrainian citizens
00:04:12are told: "You need to come here." Those who fled
00:04:16the Russian occupation call this blackmail and abuse. They are
00:04:19required to return to the captured territories
00:04:22in person. Human rights activists consider this a trap, because
00:04:26their arrival could lead to interrogations and even imprisonment.
00:04:30"You have to go through the only FSB filtration zone,
00:04:33and it's located at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport."
00:04:36"Will they let me through with a Ukrainian passport?" "I can't tell you that. It
00:04:39all depends on the border, on who it
00:04:43depends on. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it depends on the border,
00:04:47sometimes it happens that a person gets permission, comes here,
00:04:50but they're not let through at Sheremetyevo. Nobody is immune to that. You're
00:04:54given permission to register, not to
00:04:58travel here." Two decrees, issued in the Kremlin under
00:05:01Putin's signature, one numbered 1103 in December
00:05:052024, the other 145 in March
00:05:092025. Both concern the captured
00:05:50and some of them still have property. So,
00:05:53accordingly, if they don't register Russian citizenship, they
00:05:57lose it. That is, everything is taken from them.
00:06:01Roughly, absolutely, with the police, with the police, right?
00:06:04They just kick them out of their apartments and houses, right?
00:06:08Even though they lived there for 20, 30, 50 years, right?
00:06:12There's another much larger group,
00:06:16those who fled, who are now scattered across
00:06:19the world. But in order for them
00:06:22to register this property, they need
00:06:26to come in person first, to the same Mariupol,
00:06:30and personally first get Russian
00:06:33citizenship, and then go to Rosimushchestvo and deal with all this
00:06:37business. How can they get there now? Only through
00:06:39Sheremetyevo, where they are met by whom?
00:06:42FSB agents. Since October 2023,
00:06:46Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport has become virtually the only checkpoint,
00:06:50a filtration hub for Ukrainian citizens who
00:06:53expect to reach the occupied territories to their relatives, loved ones, or
00:06:57simply return home. A good friend of
00:07:00mine, he tried to return to Mariupol with his family, with the sole purpose of
00:07:04registering his property so that it wouldn't be
00:07:07taken away from him. And
00:07:10he told me that for three days, the FSB officers held him
00:07:13at Sheremetyevo. Besides him, there
00:07:17were about 30 other people from Berdyansk,
00:07:20Melitopol, Donetsk, Makiyivka, well, Mariupol, right,
00:07:24and from Lysychansk, I think, right?
00:07:27Very different people, old and young, whoever,
00:07:31right? They refused everyone,
00:07:34absolutely, and the attitude towards them was absolutely brutal. So, how
00:07:38is property taken from those who owned it before the arrival of Russian
00:07:41troops? What schemes and mechanisms of property seizure
00:07:45are being used by the Russian authorities in the occupied territories at
00:07:49present? Scheme number one:
00:07:52nullification of property rights, nationalization. Local
00:07:56authorities, appointed by the Kremlin, compile lists of real estate
00:07:59objects and make decisions on their seizure. All this
00:08:02is formalized in the form of local laws and decrees. Scheme
00:08:06number two: the introduction of a bureaucratic procedure in the occupied
00:08:09territories, the so-called re-registration of property
00:08:12rights, meaning the creation of legal barriers for those who cannot
00:08:16undergo this re-registration. This requires personal
00:08:20presence and mandatory adoption of Russian
00:08:22citizenship. The third scheme: housing is declared
00:08:26ownerless, after which it is sold off.
00:08:29The fourth and fifth schemes of property seizure:
00:08:32prohibition of state registration of rights of Ukrainian owners as
00:08:36citizens of unfriendly states, restrictions on
00:08:39notarization of powers of attorney for real estate transactions. And
00:08:43finally, the sixth scheme: initiation of criminal cases under
00:08:46articles related, for example, to accusations of extremism, and as
00:08:50a final step, judicial confiscation of personal property. The first
00:08:54signs were back in Crimea after the annexation,
00:08:57right, when it also started
00:08:59that those who didn't re-register
00:09:03through Russian citizenship, all of this was taken from them. Ukrainian historian
00:09:07Marusov, whose public activity was previously closely linked to
00:09:10the preservation of cultural heritage in Mariupol, now acts
00:09:14as an expert on the restoration of Ukrainian cities and studies
00:09:18the situation in the occupied territories. What then happened to
00:09:21this property? It was given to Russian military personnel,
00:09:24Russian security forces, and collaborators,
00:09:28right, well, that is,
00:09:30obviously, or to those who came, right,
00:09:34from mainland Russia, right, they got jobs
00:09:37and so on and so forth, right? That is, the goal
00:09:41is obvious, it's simply
00:09:42the displacement of
00:09:45the Ukrainian population. From the first day of Russian occupation,
00:09:48they pursue two policies: the policy of population replacement and the policy
00:09:52of marginalization. That is, the point is that if Ukrainians
00:09:55remain there, they must be marginalized to such an extent
00:09:59that they cannot resist, right?
00:10:02They do not operate, as we say, and
00:10:05they are quite successful here. Russians are making progress
00:10:09here because they objectively believe that two Ukrainians together
00:10:12means there will be a revolution. Well, this is the
00:10:15opinion, not groundless,
00:10:17so it needs to be diluted, and therefore
00:10:21such replacement is happening. Here again, it's not happening everywhere.
00:10:25Let's look at the truth, right? That is, it's not successful everywhere. They settled
00:10:28Lugansk region, for example, but for some reason, no one goes there, no one goes to
00:10:32Donetsk, except for the Buryats, these military personnel. Well,
00:10:36because those are, as it were, depressed regions, essentially.
00:10:39Petr Andryushchenko previously worked as an advisor to the mayor of Mariupol.
00:10:43Now his specialization, as he says, is monitoring the situation in
00:10:47the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. The problem
00:10:50is,
00:10:52in Mariupol, for example,
00:10:55the occupancy of hospitals, medical personnel of any
00:10:58specialty, right? If you look at the types, nurses,
00:11:02nannies, junior staff, mid-level staff of doctors,
00:11:05the maximum occupancy is 35%.
00:11:0865% needs to be found somewhere. Where to find them? They can only be found in
00:11:12Russia, well, in some form. They refuse to go, even for
00:11:15double salary. They don't go. But they see
00:11:19that students after university go if they are given apartments
00:11:23for free. Leaving,
00:11:31we didn't think we were saying goodbye to our home forever. We didn't
00:11:35say goodbye to it because we believed
00:11:38that we would return
00:11:40and live on. In this family,
00:11:44the war unleashed by the Kremlin separated relatives.
00:11:47Elderly parents in February 2022
00:11:50were unable to flee, letting their children and grandchildren go, they remained in the territory
00:11:53captured by Russia. Fearing for the safety of this family, we do not name
00:11:57names or specify the occupied city.
00:12:01At that time, we had a non-transportable
00:12:04grandmother, unfortunately, she has already passed away,
00:12:08so my parents initially had
00:12:12no possibility to leave, as they could not abandon grandmother, right?
00:12:16And then there were attempts, but due to
00:12:19a certain situation, with FSB
00:12:22checks, these attempts did not
00:12:25succeed. That is, as this native resident of one of
00:12:29the Ukrainian cities occupied by Russia says, her parents are
00:12:32essentially hostages. Russian FSB officers
00:12:36decide who to let go, who not from the occupied territories.
00:12:40Facts of restrictions on the freedom of movement of the civilian population are confirmed by
00:12:44international human rights organizations. This
00:12:47is recorded in the documents of the United Nations Security
00:12:49Council. According to reliable reports
00:12:53received by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
00:12:56Rights, this practice has led to numerous human rights violations,
00:13:00including the rights to freedom, personal integrity, and
00:13:04privacy. From the transcript of the UN Security
00:13:07Council meeting on September 7,
00:13:10202. Well, those who couldn't
00:13:13leave before the occupation began share information with their relatives and loved ones
00:13:17about how property rights are violated in the territories
00:13:20controlled by the Kremlin. Well, look,
00:13:24an example of my friend. He was Belarusian, bought a hotel in
00:13:27Crimea. In 2014,
00:13:31the last time we contacted him,
00:13:34he
00:13:36calls and says, "Some Caucasian
00:13:39people came to me, some Cossacks,
00:13:43and asked for my documents for
00:13:46the hotel." He says, "I gave them
00:13:49the documents, naturally Ukrainian. They tore them up
00:13:53in front of his eyes and said, 'Are there
00:13:56any more documents?'" He says, "No, there aren't any others."
00:14:00They say, "Well, tomorrow you're out with your suitcases." Another scheme
00:14:03of property seizure after Russia's capture of Ukrainian
00:14:06cities, already targeting those who remain under occupation. The
00:14:10DPR authorities made us homeless. They demolished our houses,
00:14:14annulled addresses. Kremlin-controlled authorities
00:14:17declare homes unfit for habitation, people are evicted,
00:14:21buildings are demolished, and new multi-story buildings are built in their place.
00:14:25But already for sale. "I lived in this apartment for 20 years.
00:14:28I received this apartment for my own house. Please explain
00:14:32to us, Mariupol residents, why everyone needs
00:14:35Mariupol, but no one needs us, the residents of Mariupol,
00:14:38who suffered during the hostilities. There are 1800 of us
00:14:42homeless people, we have nowhere to live." Before
00:14:45the eviction and demolition of houses, all these people, as they say,
00:14:49Russian authorities promised to provide ownership of housing in
00:14:52newly built houses, but then...
00:16:07that the apartments provided to them are not entirely
00:16:11legitimate even from the Russian point of view,
00:16:14that's why some semblance
00:16:17of legitimacy was required for the
00:16:21banditry that the occupying
00:16:25authorities were carrying out in these
00:16:28territories. Putin, all he did was, as it were,
00:16:31formalize this banditry, this robbery; he
00:16:35simply formalized it as a law. And this is what a document directly
00:16:39related to property confiscation looks like. State seal
00:16:42explanation: the property is municipal
00:16:46property, sealed. Unauthorized entry
00:16:49entails liability in accordance with the Criminal Code of the Russian
00:16:53Federation. May 2026,
00:16:56footage from a surveillance camera from the entrance of a multi-story
00:17:00building in Mariupol. According to the Telegram channel
00:17:04Andryushchenko Time, an official from the city administration on...
00:17:20apartments and houses and land plots, including those for
00:17:23which people have already processed all the documents, which are already
00:17:27officially in the registries of this Rosimushchestvo
00:17:31and so on, right? They were again there. Moreover, these
00:17:34officials, they started coming
00:17:38and hanging on
00:17:41the doors
00:17:43notifications
00:17:45that your property has all
00:17:49the signs of being ownerless. If
00:17:52you don't bring documents
00:17:55within a few days, right, and don't register it,
00:17:58then it will be recognized as ownerless. It
00:18:02will become the property, so to speak, of the Russian
00:18:04state.
00:18:06My friend's mother used to come home, making
00:18:10it seem like someone lived there, hanging laundry from
00:18:13the balcony, for example, sometimes turning on the light,
00:18:17creating some activity. Still,
00:18:20they would come and check the meters. If it hadn't registered
00:18:23some minimum, they understood that the apartment was still
00:18:27empty. They would go in
00:18:31and let
00:18:33anyone who wanted to live there. Now, about how Russian authorities explain
00:18:37the confiscation of property in the occupied territories. In
00:18:41late 2025, when passing the law, the State Duma
00:18:44explained that a legal basis was needed to provide housing to citizens
00:18:48if they lost their homes due to hostilities.
00:18:50Housing is deemed ownerless if there are no
00:18:54valid title documents for it, or if
00:18:57the owner cannot be identified. An object is recognized as ownerless based on
00:19:01inventory data from registration authorities and inspection
00:19:04reports. We studied published documents of local
00:19:08officials who implement decisions made in
00:19:10Moscow. In only one Ukrainian city under occupation,
00:19:14Mariupol, over 10,000 apartments
00:19:17were listed as ownerless. Those
00:19:21who continue to live in this city captured by Russia complain
00:19:24and are bewildered. "We've had three mayors under Russia,
00:19:28and now we seem to have our third mayor in the city.
00:19:32For some reason, the second one seems to be in prison
00:19:35for some reason. The third one,
00:19:38in sequential order, has not yet resolved
00:19:41the housing issue for people. I understand.
00:19:45Give people back their apartments." And this is a resident of Mariupol,
00:19:48Lyudmila, talking about how she lost her right to her
00:19:52property. "We were told that our documents were simply lost, that
00:19:55is, they are gone. But I think it was done
00:19:58intentionally, just to, well, specifically to deprive many
00:20:02people of their homes altogether, their own homes,
00:20:04moreover, well..."
00:20:37but also commercial properties, like some former stores, shopping
00:20:41centers, other buildings, warehouses. It would
00:20:45be strange if they weren't handed over to new, so to speak,
00:20:48feudal signs. Kickbacks
00:21:31and corruption for all other things, but in
00:21:33general, there was no normal economy, no
00:21:37economic prosperity, no investments, no real
00:21:40restoration of these territories, there wasn't, isn't, and won't be. Now, about the scale
00:21:44of what is happening, this is the text of the transcript from the Russian
00:21:47federal government from August 26th. In the Kremlin
00:21:58territories in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and
00:22:01Zaporizhzhia regions. We have registered and entered
00:22:054,600 objects based on the inventory,
00:22:08Mikhail Vladimirovich, that's about 80%.
00:22:12By real estate objects, you mean both land
00:22:15plots, and buildings, structures, and objects firmly
00:22:18connected to the land, that is.
00:22:51he was killed, and the farm was taken away. Many
00:22:54of those I
00:22:57interview in our sociological
00:23:01studies draw parallels with events a hundred years
00:23:05ago. They say that now we understand how
00:23:08the Bolsheviks came to power, by what
00:23:11methods they established their occupation regime in
00:23:14Ukraine back then in 1918-1920,
00:23:17how repressions happened.
00:23:20of the thirties, thirty- three, thirty-seven.
00:23:23And practically everyone who
00:23:27leaves, they recall
00:23:30these very events in their interviews,
00:23:34and draw direct parallels that everything
00:23:37that is happening in the occupied territories is a
00:23:41repetition of the Bolshevik experience of a hundred years ago.
00:23:44International human rights organizations classify the actions of the Russian
00:23:48authorities as massive... preserve
00:24:00documents and record facts of property rights violations.
00:24:04All of this, according to him, will be needed for appeals to
00:24:08courts after the war ends. Russia will have to pay
00:24:11reparations to Ukraine for destroyed
00:24:14cities, captured
00:24:17apartments. Human rights activists and lawyers recommend
00:24:20preserving Ukrainian documents for real estate, photos of
00:24:23apartments, houses, plots, receipts, and
00:24:26statements related to this real estate, screenshots
00:24:29of lists of ownerless property, photos
00:24:32of notifications on doors, as well as evidence of impossibility
00:24:35of entry or risk of filtration. The Register of Damage
00:24:38caused to Ukraine as a result of the Russian armed
00:24:41invasion, created under the Council of Europe in May
00:24:442023, already provides for claims for
00:24:47damage or destruction of housing, as well as for loss of access or
00:24:51control over real estate in temporarily occupied territories.
00:24:55I think huge collective lawsuits will be filed against the Russian authorities
00:24:59for seized, occupied territories, destroyed
00:25:02property. And I think that in international
00:25:04courts, all chances, so to
00:25:08speak, of winning these cases will be, let's say, with
00:25:12Ukrainian citizens whose property was taken away or destroyed. Well,
00:25:15next is the question of how, which Russian assets, who will freeze where? Freezing
00:25:18Russian state corporations, some state banks, state monopolies, everything else,
00:25:22or will it be some kind of, figuratively speaking, a reparation fund
00:25:26created, replenished, which will be replenished by
00:25:29such a duty,
00:25:33a certain tax on the export of Russian goods? That is, figuratively speaking, from every
00:25:37barrel of oil, 5-10 dollars will immediately go into this reparation
00:25:40fund for the payment of, accordingly,
00:25:44reparations to the captured citizens of Ukraine who suffered
00:25:48losses there in... Russian
00:26:03authorities immediately cancel procedures that lead to
00:26:06property confiscation and discrimination in the captured
00:26:09territories. All of the Kremlin's decisions on property re-registration
00:26:12in the territories captured by Russia, as the Ukrainian authorities declare, will be
00:26:16legally null and void immediately after the end of the occupation. This is what
00:26:20those whose apartments are now in the Russian-occupied
00:26:23cities hope for. "Everyone who now moves into
00:26:26another Mariupol resident's apartment becomes
00:26:29part of a war crime. He becomes not just
00:26:32a criminal, he becomes an accomplice
00:26:35in war crimes, in all of this that is happening. Therefore, for
00:26:39us, this is an absolutely legitimate military target.
00:26:42It would be good to remember this, regardless of gender,
00:26:46age, and so on. Well, we just have the right to do
00:26:49that. And I will say that
00:26:52having talked a lot with our people from the occupied territories, not
00:26:55only from Mariupol, this applies to everyone. We are
00:26:59enough and of different ages to..."
00:27:32there will be happiness. They
00:27:35will be cursed and are already cursed,
00:27:39and it will not bring them any benefit, no health, no
00:27:42happiness. I don't know, everyone should decide
00:27:46for themselves according to their
00:27:49own considerations, upbringing.
00:27:53But nothing good will come of it. You cannot
00:27:56build your happiness on someone else's misfortune. Ekaterina, Valeriy,
00:28:00and Vitaliy say to follow the instruction.
00:28:32there will be no other chance anyway. They still, well, there won't be happiness
00:28:36in that apartment. According to international
00:28:39human rights organizations, as of today, hundreds of
00:28:43thousands of Ukrainian citizens have had their property rights violated
00:28:46by Russia after the armed invasion.
00:28:53Novikov, Current
00:28:54Time.
00:29:42It was a real threat. There are
00:29:45criteria for launch. If they are violated, the launch
00:29:49will be canceled. Problems with hydrogen leaks happened
00:29:53during the Shuttle era, and we successfully resolved them. In the situation with
00:29:57Artemis and the SLS rocket, it is important to remember that
00:30:00this was the very first time these systems
00:30:03interacted as a single unit.
00:30:46success.
00:30:50Cars versus bicycles. Berlin discusses urban mobility
00:30:54plans.
00:30:59Cable car.