REPORT: Mariupol — 25,000 apartments declared "ownerless," the legalized theft

REPORT: Mariupol — 25,000 apartments declared "ownerless," the legalized theft

Introduction: The silent dispossession of a city

25,000 homes on expropriation lists

Russian occupation authorities in Mariupol have added approximately 25,000 apartments and houses to their lists of so-called "ownerless" properties, according to an investigation published by Novyny Donbasu (Donbas News) on June 26, 2026. These properties are earmarked for transfer into municipal ownership. Owners were informed they had until July 1, 2026 to prove their rights to their homes. Failing that, their properties would permanently pass into the hands of the occupation administration.

To understand the scale: before the occupation, Mariupol had 2,249 apartment buildings totaling 135,176 apartments, plus 37,252 individual houses. The occupation authorities have declared "ownerless" approximately 15% of the city's entire housing stock. And this figure is probably an underestimate — according to the occupation authorities themselves, 452 buildings have been demolished. The expropriation is not marginal. It is structural.

How the confiscation mechanism works

Four steps to expropriation

The confiscation process follows a four-step protocol. Step one: the property is placed on a list as "showing signs of being ownerless." Step two: it is registered by "decree" — by late May 2026, 5,306 properties had reached this stage. Step three: it is officially declared "ownerless" and entered into a registry — 4,336 properties had reached this stage. Step four: the property passes into municipal ownership. Throughout the entire process, only 358 addresses had been removed from the lists.

This four-step process creates the illusion of a legal procedure. But it is a tailor-made legal procedure, designed to end inevitably in confiscation. The word "ownerless" is a euphemism: the owners exist. Many fled the city during the fighting in 2022. Others were killed. Others are in Ukrainian-controlled territory and physically cannot appear in an occupied city to prove their rights without risking their lives. The system knows this. The system was designed knowing this.

The impossible proof of ownership for Ukrainians

A deliberately inaccessible process

For a Ukrainian citizen to prove their rights to property within the occupation system, they must obtain a Russian passport and register their property in the Russian registry. This process is described by analysts as "long, costly, and risky." For a Ukrainian citizen from Mariupol currently in free territory, there is an additional requirement: a special authorization issued by a collegial body created by the head of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic," Denis Pushiline. This authorization cannot be obtained outside occupied territory.

Since December 2025, occupation authorities have eliminated the possibility for Ukrainians to establish a power of attorney through Russian embassies. This closes the last theoretical window that allowed a Ukrainian living abroad or in free territory to appoint someone to handle their property affairs in occupied zones. It is a deliberate closure of the last escape route — a decision that says unambiguously that the system's purpose is not to allow owners to defend their rights, but to prevent them from doing so.

The most extreme cases: entire buildings confiscated

199 apartments out of 216 in a single building

The Novyny Donbasu investigation identifies buildings where confiscation is near-total. At 31 Kazantsev Street — a building heavily damaged during fighting and then reconstructed — 199 of its 216 apartments have been declared "ownerless." At 4 Kotliarevskyi Street, 173 of 216 apartments are in the same situation. At 106 Myr Avenue, 161 apartments. These figures reveal that reconstructed buildings are being prioritized for confiscation — the reconstruction itself serves as the pretext for reappropriation.

The central district of Mariupol is identified as a priority in the confiscation campaign. It is the most densely populated area of the city — and probably its most valuable real estate. Russia is not proceeding randomly: it starts with the most strategic zones, the most valuable properties, the most visible locations. This is targeted replacement colonization, designed to transform the urban fabric of Mariupol at its most visible and most irreversible level.

What international and Ukrainian law still guarantees

The legal protection that persists for owners

Onisiia Syniuk, head of the analysis department at the ZMINA Human Rights Centre, advises dispossessed owners to remotely document all violations related to their properties, notify Ukrainian law enforcement, and file complaints with the Register of Damages under the category of "loss of access to property in occupied territory." Under Ukrainian law, persons whose property has been seized by the occupier retain full property rights over their holdings — regardless of any decision made by the occupier.

The Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law explicitly prohibit an occupying power from confiscating private civilian property. Russia is systematically violating these prohibitions. These violations are being documented, recorded, and will constitute evidence in the international accountability proceedings that will follow the war — before the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and the compensation mechanisms the international community is building. The legal record is being assembled in real time.

The demographic replacement strategy

Who moves into these "ownerless" apartments

Behind the administrative machinery of confiscation lies a demographic policy. The apartments declared "ownerless" are allocated to Russian families — often families of Russian soldiers, displaced officials, or Russian civilians recruited to "repopulate" Mariupol. Russia also uses subsidized mortgages to attract Russian buyers into new or reconstructed housing, according to a Kyiv Independent investigation from April 2026.

This demographic replacement is a documented strategy. It aims to transform the composition of Mariupol's population to the point that, even if the city were one day liberated, the demographics would have changed sufficiently to complicate the return to the pre-occupation situation. It is the same strategy used in Crimea since 2014. The settlers do not identify themselves as settlers — they receive "municipal" apartments and subsidized mortgages. The crime hides in the administrative forms.

What rights defenders recommend

How to document from abroad or from free territory

Given the physical impossibility of appearing in Mariupol to defend their rights — a trip that would expose Ukrainian property owners to FSB interrogation and detention — legal experts recommend several remote actions. First: gather all available property documents — titles, contracts, bills, photographs. Second: register a complaint with the Register of Damages created by the international community to document violations. Third: notify competent Ukrainian authorities.

These actions will not recover apartments tomorrow. But they build a dossier that will be presented in post-conflict compensation proceedings. The Lugano Conference, the reparations mechanism being progressively established, and the frozen Russian funds under discussion in several Western capitals may one day serve to compensate dispossessed Ukrainian property owners. The documentation work today is an investment in tomorrow's justice. It is the only form of resistance that is simultaneously legal, safe, and effective from a distance.

Mariupol rebuilt for others: the transformed urban portrait

A city razed and rebuilt according to a new master plan

Russia is not only confiscating existing apartments — it is rebuilding Mariupol according to an entirely new master plan designed in Moscow. Buildings destroyed during the 2022 fighting are being replaced by new constructions whose architecture and layout are designed to erase the Ukrainian memory of the city. Ukrainian street names have been changed. Visual symbols of Ukrainian identity have been removed. The city that is rising is not the same as the city that was destroyed.

Russian construction companies — some linked to oligarchs close to the Kremlin — have won massive contracts for this reconstruction. These companies use foreign workers — sometimes under conditions that human rights observers describe as resembling forced labor — to build the buildings that Russia intends for its replacement population. Mariupol is presented as a "renaissance project" in Russian media. For the 470,000 residents who lived there before 2022, it is a city being stolen from them twice: first by war, then by land registries.

Conclusion: What Mariupol says about Russia's project in Ukraine

Confiscation as a revelation of intent

The systematic confiscation of Mariupol's apartments is not an accidental byproduct of war — it is the clearest signal of Russia's actual intentions. An occupier that did not plan to stay might confiscate certain strategic assets, but not 15% of an entire city's residential stock, with a codified four-step administrative procedure. This scale says: we are planning to stay permanently. These apartments will never be voluntarily returned. That is not an interpretation — it is the documented logic of the system.

The silent resistance of absent owners

But absent owners are not powerless. They are documenting. They are filing complaints. They are preserving their property titles. And Ukraine, with its allies, is building the mechanisms that will ensure these violations do not go unanswered. Mariupol will be liberated or compensated. Both, ideally. The history of occupying empires teaches that none has ever permanently erased a population from its territory. The Ukrainian resistance — even silent, even at a distance — is a reality that Pushiline's expropriation lists cannot erase.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency note

Editorial positioning

This report is written from the perspective of a columnist convinced that Russia's confiscation of civilian property in Ukraine constitutes serious violations of international humanitarian law and war crimes that must be prosecuted. The data presented comes exclusively from verified sources.

Sources and limits

The data on the number of confiscated apartments comes from the Novyny Donbasu investigation published by Ukrainska Pravda on June 26, 2026. The author does not have direct access to Mariupol and relies on open sources. The figures on properties registered at each step of the process may have evolved since the investigation's publication date.

Sources

Primary sources

Ukrainska Pravda — Russians Have Categorised Around 25,000 Apartments and Houses in Mariupol as "Ownerless" — June 26, 2026

Secondary sources

Kyiv Independent — Human Rights Watch Condemns Russia's Unlawful Property Seizures in Occupied Ukraine — May 26, 2026

Kyiv Independent — Russians Buy Up Mortgage Housing in Occupied Mariupol — April 23, 2026

United24 Media — Ukrainians Face Property Seizures and Forced Russian Passports Under Occupation

ISW — Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 27, 2026 — June 27, 2026

Kyiv Independent — Context: Occupied Territories — June 23, 2026