In occupied Crimea, corrupt notaries are helping transfer ownership of Ukrainians’ apartments to Russian military personnel. It’s just one of several schemes the Kremlin-installed authorities are using to strip Ukrainians of their property — especially those who refused to take Russian citizenship.
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The dispossession of property has become one of Russia’s tools for pushing Ukrainians out of Crimea. The Kremlin has led a sweeping campaign of so-called “nationalization,” which spiked in 2014–2015 and has since expanded in scope following Russia’s full-scale invasion.
“In 2022, they added a new category — citizens of so-called ‘unfriendly countries,’” said Mykyta Petrovets, a legal expert at Ukraine’s Regional Center for Human Rights. “That includes basically all European nations — and of course, Ukraine. If you oppose Russian aggression or support sanctions, your property can be confiscated on that basis alone.”
People on a beach in the Black Sea resort city of Yevpatoria, Crimea. April 29, 2025.
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‘Erasing Ukrainian presence’
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In March 2020, Vladimir Putin signed a decree designating nearly the entire [Crimean] peninsula as a so-called “border territory” of the Russian Federation — a move that banned “foreigners” from owning land in Crimea. According to legal expert Mykyta Petrovets, the decree became yet another tool for property dispossession.
“They gave landowners about a year to sell or transfer their property,” Petrovets said. “After that, the process became essentially forced sales through the courts. Now, many of these plots are being auctioned off.”
Under Ukrainian law, nothing has changed — Ukrainian citizens still legally own their land. But the Russian-installed authorities in Crimea have begun publishing lists of addresses and cadastral numbers for properties they intend to confiscate. According to documentation collected by the Regional Center for Human Rights, over the past three years, the number of Crimean land parcels registered to so-called “foreign nationals” has dropped by 50 percent — from over 11,000 to just 5,000.
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After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine’s Justice Ministry filed an inter-state lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), accusing Russia of systematic human rights violations in the occupied territory — including the illegal seizure of property. In June 2024, the court ruled in Ukraine’s favor. It declared Russia’s actions unlawful, including the imposition of Russian law in Crimea.
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Meanwhile, Russian officials continue to publicize their efforts to seize and redistribute property in Crimea. Larisa Kulinich, the Russian-installed minister for property and land relations in Crimea, recently announced that 900 properties were “nationalized” in 2024. The sale of those assets, she claimed, brought 2.8 billion rubles ($34.9 million) into the regional budget. Many of the confiscated properties are now being offered as rewards to Russian soldiers fighting against Ukraine.
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