Since the beginning of the armed conflict in 2014 in the Donbas region and even more since the 2022 full scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia, several dwellings (mostly flats in multi-story buildings, but also individual houses) have been characterised as „abandoned“ by the occupying Russian administration which presented that as a major issue in spring 2023. For example, both the heads of the government of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR) and “Luhansk People’s Republic” (LNR) (the Russian names for the Donetsk and the Luhansk regions occupied by (pro)Russian forces) publicly stated that the lack of payment for common services in thousands of flats was an issue that needed to be addressed (1).
These declarations paved the way for the seizure of these dwellings, which was officially implemented in 2021 when the first decree on “ownerless property” (бесхозяйное имущество) was adopted in the “DNR”. This seizure – in general, officially called “recognition as municipal property” in the legal documents – was accelerated and extended with the adoption of similar laws and decrees in the four occupied regions in March 2024 (fig 1). Now, the occupying administration publishes very regularly – several times per month – updated lists of “ownerless properties” in the different Russian websites of occupying municipalities. These lists are accompanied by a small text referring to the decrees and laws and specifying that if the former residents of the dwellings do not come forward within thirty calendar days, with a title deed or lease contract recognised by the Russian administration, the dwellings will first be considered “ownerless property” and then became the property of the municipalities.
The regions that have been annexed by Russia are not recognized as Russian territories by most states and, first and foremost, by Ukraine. From this perspective, this seizure, as all the practices of the Russian administration in occupied territories, is illegal. They are nonetheless justified by a seemingly legal apparatus which echoes the recurrent and misguided instrumentalization of the law by the Russian government to justify its invasion of Ukraine (Allison, 2024). Besides, this labelling of dwellings as “ownerless property” may regulate housing allocation de facto. Journalist investigations have already reported situations when Ukrainian citizens, whose identity documents are not recognised by the occupying administration, find themselves in a legal stalemate (2): they used to occupy and/or own legally these dwellings, but these property titles don’t have any value for the occupying administration that is now in the capacity to seize these dwellings.
Dwelling seizure as a dimension of occupation and production of “quasi-statehood”
This practice of seemingly legal dwelling seizure shows that housing policies are an important dimension of occupation and production of “quasi-statehood” (Anghel-Sienerth, 2024).
In the context of war, the most striking dimension of the appropriation of housing space by the invader is probably the demolition of infrastructures and buildings, as well as its reconstruction as part of occupation. War demolition does not only mean the destruction of the materiality of the city but also of the landmarks and habits of the people who used to live within these walls (Azzouz & Gubkina, 2023). War demolition of housing has thus been interpreted as an intentional targeting of the population’s identities, which had been shaped by practices and representations of urban space, as shown by the literature on urbicide (Shaw, 2004; Coward, 2009), that Ukraine has also tragically experienced (Mezentsev & Mezenstev, 2022). Compared to the destruction of houses, legal seizure is, at the first sight, less tangible. Yet, it also contributes to the alienation of the rights of the former residents and deprives them from their capacity to live in their housing space as they used to do. This can also lead to the reallocation of the dwellings to other people and thus contributes to a general dispossession that operates at every level of the occupied territories in Ukraine (Wanner, 2024).
The legal apparatus regulating housing space also participates in the legitimisation of a “quasi-statehood”. Alongside “seemingly democratic instruments” and “propaganda”, the “centralisation of political power and institutional consolidation” (Anghel-Sienerth, 2024) is indeed a way to reinforce the effective administration of the territory by the occupying forces. This function of legitimisation might explain the publicaction of the lists of dwellings that are accessible online.
Mapping “ownerless property”: case study and methodology
This publication makes it possible to identify the spatial extent of the phenomenon by mapping the dwellings that are labelled as “ownerless property” by the occupying administration.
An article in the Russian independent newspapers Novaya Gazeta was devoted to this phenomenon in May 2024 (3) thus enlightening some of its geographical patterns: most of it is located in the cities of Mariupol (Donetsk oblast), Melitopol (Zaporizhzhia oblast) and Svatove (Luhansk oblast). The paper also shows that the seized dwellings are more concentrated in the cities-centres or along the main roads whereas by contrast, there are few on the disadvantaged areas or on the frontline.
During a fellowship at the KVK department, I have been collecting this data and mapping it in order both to document this practiceof seizure and to analyse its spatial patterns. The task is to map these “ownerless properties” through scraping and geocoding the addresses available on the websites of the municipalities. A first stage of the study is focused on the sixteen municipalities of the “DNR”. This allows to map the different dwellings for each day when a list is published, as we can see on the animated map of the city of Khartsyzk (fig. 2), an industrial town known for its metallurgy, located in the Donbas region, 25 kilometres southeast of Donetsk and under the control of the (pro)Russian forces since 2014.
Open questions and further investigation
These lists are interesting to study and map per se as they allow us to analyse the spatial dimension of the urban policies of the occupying administration and their legal framework. Nevertheless, the legal framework does not reflect practices. In addition to the geographical and diachronic dimensions of the phenomenon that these lists make it possible to study, several questions remain open.
First, the distribution of dwellings by the Russian administration is unclear. Newspapers report that they may be distributed to war veterans, displaced people whose dwellings have been destroyed (on the condition that they hold Russian passports) or new settlers coming from Russia (4).
Second, legal resources for people facing dispossession are still to be investigated and documented. Several testimonies in the press and on social networks suggest that it will be very difficult for people of Ukrainian citizenship who have been forced to flee to recover them or obtain any compensation, if the occupation remains.
A field survey with the people directly concerned will therefore be carried out to investigate these issues.
This blog post presents research conducted by Guénola Inizan during a research fellowship in the Kartographie und Visuelle Kommunikation (KVK) Department and is part of the VisLab of the KonKoop project. The author is grateful to E. Nyamador for his help with geocoding and to Sofia Gavrilova and Jana Moser for their guidance.
Notes
(1), (2), (3) Украина квартиру дала, а Россия теперь отбирает [Ukraine gave the apartment, and now Russia is taking it away.] Novata Gazeta 13/05/2024. URL: https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/05/20/ukraina-kvartiru-dala-a-rossiia-teper-otbiraet
(4): Russia Moves to Expropriate Homes in Occupied Regions, Der Spiegel, 19/11/2023. URL : https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-landgrab-in-ukraine-russia-moves-to-expropriate-homes-in-occupied-regions-a-9418d3e7-66c9-4b84-b6d4-15e7e514063f
Bibliography
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ANGHEL-SIENERTH, Karla (2024): Quasi-statehood architecture in eastern Ukraine: The case of ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’. Journal of Romanian Literary Studies, 37, p. 986‑1006.
AZZOUZ, Ammar et Evgeniia GUBKINA (2023): Narratives of Destruction. E-flux, en ligne: https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/reconstruction/556969/narratives-of-destruction
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