Russians take apartments in occupied areas: WSJ found out how Ukrainians are depriving housing
Visiting Russians receive a number of benefits, including an almost zero border for housing, writes The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). One of the ads praises the "majestic style" of the building architecture in Mariupol and its profitable location in 15 minutes of walking from the sea. The only caveat is that the house is damaged during the fighting. It is a four-storey "House with a Watch", a well-known monument of Stalin's architecture, built in the 1950s on Peace Avenue.
Residents say that the house was already sold to those who came from Russia. In the first weeks of the war in Mariupol, entire areas and the famous Azovstal metallurgical plant were destroyed. Now realtors praise the cleanliness of the air in the city. "We, the former owners of apartments, were refused re -settlement," - a local resident Olena Pudak told reporters, whose mother had a spacious apartment in this house.
In the occupied territory, he was appointed by Russia, the authorities confiscated thousands of apartments, declaring them "unprecedented". Ukrainians who escaped from the war were faced with a serious obstacle - a confirmation of ownership or compensation. The Russian from Siberia told how she was blinded by the bright sun when she first arrived in Mariupol in 2024.
She bought an apartment in this city that needs a little repair and now wants to hold a pension there, fulfilling her husband's dream of life by the sea. The resident of Mariupol Alexander Nosochenko told how the Russian military occupied his cottage on the seashore on the outskirts of the city. The mass influx of Russians opened the real estate market in a destroyed city.
"While the workers were clearing the blockage, the realtors bought real estate cheaper from the fugitive residents," the authors of the material indicate. Residents of the House with a clock went to the territory controlled by Ukraine, to Russia and the countries of Europe, but some of them worried the siege of the city in the basement of the building, until they leak in the summer. The "authorities" of the city decided to demolish the building.
According to the chairman of the Association of the residents of Maria Tikhovskaya, three excavators broke during demolition. "The house itself resisted the demolition," she explained. However, the residents hoped to get apartments in an updated house, the reconstruction of which was led by the Roskapstroy branch owned by the Ministry of Construction of Russia. Instead of spacious two -room apartments, the developer made mostly studios and opened a sales office near the site.
Among the buyers was a realtor from Mariupol, who booked three apartments in a new "house with a clock". All the apartments were sold in a week, and most buyers were from Russia. When construction work began, residents of the city appeal to the local bodies of the occupying power, where they were told that the law had changed. Residents are no longer entitled to relocation to their former homes, but have the right to relocate to any place within the city limit.
Elena Pudak's mother tried to return to Mariupol to get compensation for her apartment. She was not even allowed to come to the Russian Airport Sheremetyevo, the only legal entry point for Ukrainians who want to return to the occupied territories. She was not given explanations, the Pudak suspects that the occupying authorities are trying to prevent the entry of Ukrainians with property claims.
Residents of the house with a clock filed a lawsuit against the so -called "power of the DNR", arguing that their rights as newly arrived citizens of Russia had been violated. In a letter to the name of Russian President Vladimir Putin, they outlined their position, but there was no answer. At the end of 2025, the court made its decision not in their favor.