Investigation: Inside Russia's real estate theft scheme
Despite promises of 'prosperity' in occupied Mariupol, Russia is seizing properties and inventing bogus reasons to avoid paying compensation to the owners.
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Some Mariupol residents who lost their homes during Russia’s brutal 2022 takeover have only their keys left to remind them of their lives there.
That, and the label ‘homeless.’
Three years on, Moscow’s ‘reconstruction’ of the city is just a state-organized scheme to steal property and replace the city’s Ukrainian population with Russians.
The Counteroffensive can now reveal some of the inner workings of that scheme.
The plot is a fraud aimed at legitimizing the theft of Ukrainian property, and involves such tricks as changing the address so that original owners can’t claim they once lived there. As a result, property that Ukrainians have spent years paying off can easily fall into Russian hands.
On September 23, the occupation authorities of Mariupol marked three years since its illegal referendum, in which, according to their data, more than half of the residents voted to join Russia. Russian propaganda declares that the city is ‘flourishing’, but a look into the social media groups where the city’s residents discuss their daily problems proves otherwise.
The real estate scheme is just one small part of the Kremlin’s wider plan to erase Mariupol’s Ukrainian identity and replace its population with Russian citizens.
Prime mortgage rates are available to Russians who want to move to Mariupol, but not for its original residents. Putin even issued a decree granting payments to Russian citizens who relocate to stolen Ukrainian land for purposes including the reconstruction of infrastructure, or who sustain an injury during this process.
In the three-month period during which the city was under siege at the start of the full-scale invasion, Russian forces destroyed 50 percent of the city’s apartment buildings, according to preliminary data that the Ukrainian-controlled Mariupol City Council provided to The Counteroffensive. The initial estimate of damage to all Mariupol was $14.1 billion.
After the takeover, Russian authorities made a show of their campaign to ‘restore’ the city by rebuilding houses on the sites of the ones that had been destroyed.
“Everyone who is entitled to compensation will receive it,” Russia’s Vladimir Putin promised Mariupol residents in 2024. “Approximately 1,700 houses have been restored.”
But some residents who come forward for compensation fall victim to an especially sneaky trick: Russian authorities simply rename streets and addresses in Mariupol, effectively rendering nonexistent the homes for which residents seek compensation. These address changes mean people can’t receive the compensation promised by the occupation authorities, the Mariupol City Council told The Counteroffensive.
Natalya Svidlova experienced this firsthand.
Before the full-scale invasion, she lived in the Central (Zhovtnevyi) District and had her own coffee and tea shop. The Russian military destroyed her shop and her house, and over time changed the street address by adding just one letter.
“They changed the address. It was Kuprina 65, and now it’s Kuprina 65A,” Svidlova told The Counteroffensive.
Her house was demolished. Now, a new residential complex is being prepared for construction in its place.
A sign announcing the new building at the construction site also shows the changed address with a single letter’s difference: Kuprina 65A.
The project is being commissioned by Sirius Build, a company founded in Mariupol just over a year ago. They promised to complete construction in the first quarter of 2026.
Currently, Svidlova lives in Odesa, in southern Ukraine. She said she did not re-register her flat to seek compensation because that would have required her to physically go to Mariupol amid Russian occupation.
Due to the change of the street address, she will most likely not be able to obtain compensatory housing, as her documents now list a different address.
Locals in a Mariupol Telegram chat have also complained about the street renaming scheme.
Over the course of three years, the names of at least 101 streets in the city have been changed.
Often, the streets are given names associated with Soviet times. For example, the street named after the prominent Ukrainian historian Mykhailo Hrushevskyi was renamed ‘60 Years of the USSR’ street.
Russian media portray such changes as a fight against Ukraine’s ‘decommunization,’ a process which involved renaming streets, districts, enterprises, bridges, and other entities associated with communism.
“It is a deliberate policy of destroying Ukrainian culture and everything Ukrainian in the occupied territories,” said Serhii Lankin, a lawyer at the Ukrainian law firm ‘Hloba & Hloba’ told The Counteroffensive.
Want compensation for your destroyed home? Become Russian.
In order to get compensation for a damaged or destroyed home, the occupying authorities in Mariupol require owners to re-register them. But to do so, they must physically travel to the city and have Russian documents: a passport and an insurance number.
Even for those who want to travel to Mariupol, this is not easy, as Russia changed the rules for Ukrainian citizens crossing the border in 2023.
Crossing was initially only permitted at two border points: Vientuli on the Latvian border and through Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. Vientuli was subsequently closed by Latvia in response to Russia’s decision to restrict the entry of Ukrainian citizens, so Sheremetyevo is now the only route.
Russian authorities have also exploited this situation, marking homes ‘ownerless’ if Ukrainians don’t want to undertake this costly and dangerous trip. In this way, the government is able to seize properties, declaring some buildings abandoned so as to build new facilities on the site and sell them.
The procedure for declaring housing ‘ownerless’ in Mariupol takes about nine months — faster than in Russia. At the end of 2024, about 5,000 apartments in the city were declared ownerless, Putin said at the time.
Russia’s cynical bid to repopulate Mariupol
The Russian-occupation head of Mariupol, Oleg Morgun, claimed at the end of 2024 that the process of providing compensatory housing to residents who lost it during the war was already 94 percent complete, with more than 4,500 brand-new apartments handed over.
Several major companies have been involved in the reconstruction of Mariupol. One of the main companies is Roskapstroy, which said it had been contracted to rebuild more than 1,700 facilities in Mariupol.
Notably, Roskapstroy was created in 2016 by the personal order of Putin, and the company is subordinate to the Ministry of Construction of Russia. In 2023, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Roskapstroy.
The Ukrainian-led Mariupol City Council condemned the construction and will not recognize the legal change of addresses by the Russians, the organization told The Counteroffensive. On social media, the city council also reports problems with water supply in the city. People under occupation have been living without water at home for weeks, and when they do receive it on schedule, it is of poor quality.
The same applies to compensation. Despite Russian promises, Mariupol residents write in local Telegram chats that people have been waiting for years for compensatory housing. At the beginning of this year, over 5,500 residents were still on the housing waitlist.
“I have been waiting for a two-room apartment since February 2023. Now there are 585 people ahead of me. I am ready to settle for a one-room apartment,” wrote Mariupol resident Tatyana in a local Telegram channel.
While people are waiting, apartments in rebuilt buildings are being sold with an attractive 2 percent mortgage offer — some three times less than the average mortgage in Russia. This encourages Russians to buy apartments in the city, apparently part of a wider scheme to boost the city’s population with Russian citizens while driving Ukrainians out. Advertisements for this deal are actively promoted by development companies and in Mariupol Telegram chats.
Disclaimer: The Counteroffensive cannot confirm whether the people writing in the chat are actually in Mariupol at the moment.
“They don’t give [the mortgage] to locals... One of the houses for mortgage was built on the site of my mother’s house, and she didn’t get an apartment there,” a Mariupol native with the nickname Gluhoy wrote in the Telegram chat.
“The mortgage programs they [Russians] are implementing, the imposition of their own legislation, the expropriation of property... Each of these actions, by itself, constitutes a war crime,” Serhii Lankin, an international law attorney at the Ukrainian law firm ‘Hloba & Hloba,’ told The Counteroffensive. “This is expropriation, which is prohibited by the international statute of the International Criminal Court, i.e. the Rome Statute, and in accordance with… the Hague Convention.”
Despite the advertisements for mortgages in new buildings, construction is not progressing as quickly as local authorities promised, and in some cases, residents have complained of construction work only making conditions worse.
“They dig something up periodically. A few days ago, they damaged a cable. The area was left without electricity... It was a wonderful neighborhood. Now it’s just construction pits,” a Mariupol resident named Liudmyla wrote in the local Telegram chat.
Three years into Russian rule, Mariupol residents continue to remind the world of their existence with rallies in Ukraine and various cities worldwide.
At one of the latest rallies in Kyiv on September 21, when the founding of Mariupol is celebrated, more than 100 natives brought the keys to their apartments which remained under occupation.
Among them was 78-year-old Nelia.
She lived in Mariupol her entire life and worked at the famous Azovstal steelworks. But then, she says, Russia took over, and she became homeless at the age of 75.
But she still has faith that she will return to the city.
“As soon as Mariupol is Ukrainian, I will go there immediately,” she told The Counteroffensive. “Even if I have to live in a tent there. I lived there for 75 years. This is my city.”
NEWS OF THE DAY:
By: Anastasiia Kryvoruchenko
Good morning to readers; Kyiv remains in Ukrainian hands.
ZELENSKYY, TRUMP TO TALK TOMAHAWKS: Zelenskyy will meet with Trump in Washington on Friday, Oct 17th to discuss long-range Tomahawk missile supplies, the Financial Times reported.
The US could sell from 20 to 50 such missiles to its European allies, which would send them to Ukraine, according to director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security, Stacie Pettyjohn. Russia is trying to prevent the deal, saying it would worsen the relations between Washington and the Kremlin.
Long-range Tomahawk missiles would come in handy for Ukraine, which is now trying to weaken oil facilities, critical for the Russian economy.
RUSSIA MAY HAVE AIDED N. KOREAN ICBM PROGRAM: North Korea has likely received Russian assistance in developing its new intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-20, which was revealed during the military parade in Pyongyang several days ago, Yonhap News Agency reported.
The missile can target any location in the U.S., but doubts remain about its functionality. North Korea described it as “the most powerful strategic nuclear weapon system.”
Since 2023, South Korea has already launched four reconnaissance satellites and plans to launch a fifth, which will allow it to obtain data from North Korea every two hours.
MILITARY AID TO UKRAINE CUT TWICE IN LAST MONTHS: The overall level of military aid to Ukraine decreased by 47 percent in July and August this year, according to a report by the Kiel Institute. Aid from Europe dropped by 57 percent.
At the beginning of July 2025, the United States, Ukraine’s largest military aid provider, suspended shipments of Patriots and precision weapons to the country and accused European allies of not sharing the burden of support.
After that, Europe was forced to take responsibility for aiding Ukraine and created the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), a mechanism under which it purchases weapons from the U.S. and delivers them to Ukraine.
Financial and humanitarian assistance remain at the same level as before. Several countries have already pledged their support and allocated budgets for it.
CAT OF WAR
This cutie belongs to Liza’s friend, and she often takes him for walks in the city park. He loves climbing tall trees and enjoying the view from above.
Stay safe out there.
Best,
Yelyzaveta
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Thank you, Yelyzaveta! This is another horrendous scheme I knew nothing about, and I bet most Americans don’t either. Just one more treacherous and insidious evil that Putin is orchestrating. I wish the US was more helpful to Ukraine! It’s so incredibly unfair.
Our current fascist oligarchy is not the America I grew up in. In the past, we would have given so much to support a sister country, such as Ukraine. Now, to trump and co., Ukraine is on the opposite side of the earth, and therefore not our problem. I wish Zelensky good luck with the orange menace this Friday.
I sincerely hope there will be truth and reconciliation after Ukraine reclaims the lands stolen by Putin.