OPINION: One million civilians under Russian occupation, cut off from basic services

The reality documented by the UN

A report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) published in January 2026 establishes that approximately one million civilians are living in Ukrainian territories under Russian occupation, "largely cut off from basic services and protection mechanisms." These people live under severe movement restrictions and in constant danger. Without reliable drinking water, without regular electricity, without medical access, without secure communications, without the protection of Ukrainian law — and under the occupation of an army that practices systematic repression.

This figure of one million arrives in a specific context: the opening, on June 15, 2026 in Luxembourg, of formal negotiations on the fundamental principles of Ukraine's accession to the European Union — the rule of law, fundamental freedoms, democratic institutions. Journalist Zarina Zabriskie argues that the way Ukraine treats these civilians upon their return from occupation is "a direct test" of those same values. The accession process and the occupation policy are not separate. They are the same question.

One million people. That is not abstract. It is the equivalent of the entire population of Quebec City, or Lyon, or Birmingham. Imagine those inhabitants cut off from water, electricity, gas, their doctor, and communications. That is what these Ukrainians are living through. Right now. While we discuss diplomatic protocols and accession clusters and negotiating frameworks that never quite get to the humans inside the occupied territory.

The only region fully occupied then partially liberated

Kherson Oblast occupies a particular place in this analysis. It is the only Ukrainian region that was fully occupied — from March to November 2022 — and then partially liberated. Today, more than 70% of the region remains under occupation. Tens of thousands of Ukrainians are still there, waiting for the occupation to end, as it ended for 30% of the region in 2022. Evhen Hilin, a candidate in law and head of the community organization "Misto Syly" (City of Strength) in Kherson, describes Kherson Oblast as "particularly revealing" of the Ukrainian legal gap for civilians returning from occupation.

Most of the residents who remain in the occupied zones of Kherson are elderly people, families with children who could not leave, or people attached to their land and their homes. They are not collaborators — they are victims of an occupation they did not choose. Yet upon returning to Ukrainian-controlled territory, they face a legal void: Ukrainian law does not provide a specific procedure for their reintegration. They return to a country that has no formal mechanism to receive them.

Elderly people who could not flee. Families with children clinging to their homes. That is who lives under this occupation. When someone talks about "negotiating a ceasefire" that would leave these territories to Russia, they should have these faces in mind. These are not statistics. These are human beings who waited for their country and whose country has an obligation — not only to liberate them, but to receive them when they come back.

No formal procedure for returning civilians

Journalist Zarina Zabriskie, in her column published on Ukrainska Pravda on June 27, 2026 (originally published in Byline Times on June 16), identifies a precise legal problem: Ukrainian law does not provide a distinct legal procedure for civilians returning from occupation. There is no clearly defined mechanism for identity verification, rehabilitation, and reintegration. This gap creates two sets of risks: human rights violations for traumatized people who cannot access the services they need, and a national security risk if Russian influence agents slip in among returning civilians without a robust verification mechanism.

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) had interviewed 278 civilians who survived Russian occupation. These people had suffered torture, detention, or prolonged exposure to violence. Their specific needs are not being met because "support programs are fragmented, incomplete, and accessible only to certain groups." Article 14 of the UN Convention Against Torture guarantees victims a right to rehabilitation — a right that Ukraine has committed to respecting but that its current legal framework does not fully implement.

278 civilians interviewed by the UN. Tortured, detained, traumatized. And when they return to free territory, no formal reception procedure. No structured rehabilitation. Fragmented programs. This is not how a nation that aspires to join the European Union should treat those who survived the worst that its enemies inflicted. Ukraine knows this — that is why this debate is happening.

The mental health of civilians from the right bank of Kherson

Civilians from the occupied parts of Kherson Oblast carry severe psychological trauma: months under drone attacks and mine threats, hunger and the absence of basic services — water, electricity, gas, heating, communications, medical care. These people arrive in free territory with invisible wounds that social and medical services struggle to address. If they are immediately subjected to conditions that recall detention, or to military verification without prior medical assessment, their conditions can deteriorate dramatically.

Trauma psychology researchers are clear: the reintegration of people who have suffered prolonged occupation requires time, trained professionals, and an approach that respects individual dignity. Prioritizing security verification without simultaneously offering psychological and social support is inverting the priorities. It is not only inhumane — it is counterproductive: unhealed people become long-term public health and social burdens. Treating them as suspects first and patients second is both wrong and strategically self-defeating.

Months under drones. Hunger. Cold. No doctor. These people arrive in free territory with wounds the eye cannot see. Treating them first as security suspects rather than as victims to be cared for is traumatizing them a second time. And no nation that aspires to the rule of law should allow itself to do that. The standard is not perfection — it is dignity. That bar is reachable.

A practical obstacle to reintegration

The OHCHR report of 2026 reveals that 12% of internally displaced persons from occupied territories possess no official documents — no birth certificates, no passports. These people were unable to obtain or renew their Ukrainian documents during the occupation. The report notes that "Ukrainian authorities have not yet established a simplified administrative procedure for the issuance of birth and death certificates that occurred in occupied territories, although this is in principle provided for under Ukrainian law."

This administrative gap creates a vicious cycle: without documents, people cannot access public services, social assistance, healthcare, housing. Without access to these services, their reintegration into Ukrainian society is compromised. And without successful reintegration, the risk that some individuals — manipulated or vulnerable — might be used as vectors of Russian influence increases. Solving the documentation problem is therefore not merely a bureaucratic matter — it is a national security matter. The simplest lever available and the most neglected.

12% of displaced persons from occupied zones have no papers. In any European Union country, that is a situation that triggers emergency protocols. In Ukraine, at war, with millions of displaced persons — it is a reality that deserves the same urgency. Simplifying the document procedures is within reach of the Ukrainian legislature. It is a choice of political priority, not a technical impossibility.

A national strategy for civilians returning from occupation

The OHCHR recommends the adoption of a new national strategy on internal displacement that "takes into account the particular needs and vulnerabilities of persons displaced from occupied territories." This strategy should provide a formal procedure for returning civilians — including a rehabilitation and reintegration period with full access to legal aid and social services before any decision concerning mobilization. Identity verification, document renewal, medical examinations, and mental state assessment should take place during this period.

The European Union, within the framework of its accession negotiations with Ukraine, holds an important lever. The fundamental freedom, democratic institutions, and rule of law — the values of the first negotiating cluster opened in Luxembourg on June 15 — must apply concretely to the most vulnerable people. Ukrainian NGOs and researchers are asking the EU to integrate this requirement into its dialogue with Kyiv. That would be consistent with the values Ukraine is seeking to join. Consistency is the credibility test of any accession process.

Ukraine wants to join the European Union. The EU has criteria. Those criteria include the dignified treatment of vulnerable people. This dialogue — between Brussels and Kyiv on the protection of civilians returning from occupation — should be happening now, not after the war. It is a demonstration of values, not a post-war luxury. The time to build the mechanism is before it is urgently needed.

The cost of the legal void on family decisions

The absence of a clear policy for returning civilians has concrete demographic consequences: some families choose to remain in occupied zones because of the uncertainty about their prospects in free territory. They ask themselves: what awaits us on the other side? What rights will we have? How will we reintegrate into Ukrainian society after four and a half years of separation? Ukraine currently has no clear institutional answer to these questions. That absence of an answer is itself an answer — one that can discourage returns.

Children remain in occupied zones under bombardment, drone attacks, and humanitarian deprivation. Adults remain out of attachment to their homes, their land, their memories. The longer people remain under occupation, the deeper the Russification process goes, the more complex their future reintegration becomes. Every month of legal void on the Ukrainian side is another month that the Russian occupation uses to transform these people. The urgency is real. The mechanism to address it is a legislative session away.

Families staying under occupation because they do not know what awaits them on the other side. This hesitation — understandable, human, painful — is a direct consequence of a political void that Ukraine can fill. It is not a question of resources — it is a question of legislative will and institutional courage. The mechanism exists in principle. What is needed is the decision to build it in practice.

How a verification void creates vulnerabilities

Russia inherited Soviet and KGB methods for infiltrating influence agents into adversary populations. People returning from occupation zones — after being exposed to Russian propaganda, after potentially being approached, recruited, or coerced into cooperating with the occupier — require a systematic verification and debriefing period. Not to be treated as suspects, but to identify those who may have been manipulated, offer them support, and protect Ukrainian networks from infiltration.

Such a verification mechanism, properly implemented with rights guarantees, would strengthen national security — not compromise it. It would also allow the collection of testimony about war crimes committed in occupied zones. According to journalist Zabriskie, "the collection of war crime testimony would also serve Ukraine's interests." These witnesses returning from occupation are living archives of Russian violations. Identifying, protecting, and documenting them is both a legal and a strategic imperative. The testimony is evidence. The evidence is irreplaceable.

Verifying people returning from occupation is not paranoia — it is reasoned prudence. And if it is combined with adequate psychological and social support, it becomes a tool of protection rather than stigmatization. The distinction between "security" and "dignity" is fine — but Ukraine must learn to hold it. Both are possible simultaneously. The design of the mechanism determines which one prevails.

The war is not only on the front-line map

When Western chancelleries discuss scenarios for "peace" or "conflict freeze," when special envoys draw lines on maps, this million civilians under occupation is rarely at the center of the conversation. They should be. Any arrangement that leaves these people indefinitely under Russian occupation — without water, without electricity, without a doctor, without rights — is not a peace. It is a capitulation dressed up as pragmatism. The map can have a line. These people cannot be the cost of drawing it.

What Ukraine owes its citizens under occupation

Ukraine owes these people more than a hypothetical future liberation. It owes them a policy that says clearly: when you return, here is how we receive you, here are your rights, here are the services you can access, here is how we document what you endured. This is not altruism — it is the definition of a state governed by law. And it is exactly the test that European integration imposes on Ukraine. The time to pass it is now — while the accession negotiations give it leverage, urgency, and an international audience.

To the one million Ukrainian civilians under Russian occupation: you are Ukrainian. You are citizens of a country that is fighting to free you. The road is long and painful. But Ukraine has an obligation to you — and this opinion piece, in its small way, demands that it fulfil that obligation. Not after the war. Not when conditions permit. Now. Because you are there now.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

Method and sources

This text keeps the basic distinction between verified facts and interpretive analysis. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under Sources, never here.

Primary source families used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

Secondary source families: specialised publications, internationally recognised news media, analyses from established research institutions, reports from industry organisations.

When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under Sources.

Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a critical, contextual synthesis based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.