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<\/p>\nThe chief aim is probably to change the ethnic makeup and instal people more likely than Ukrainians to be loyal to the Russian invaders<\/p>\n
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Having failed to convince Ukrainians that the Russian invaders are \u2018liberators\u2019, Russia is increasingly driving out Ukrainians from occupied territory and bringing in its own citizens.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
IRC-South posted a photo in occupied Kherson oblast of one of the families of men who fought in what Russia continues to call its \u2018special military operation\u2019 [\u2018SVO\u2019 from the Russian words], i.e. its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.\u00a0 \u00a0The Ukrainian publication reports that Russia is, in brazen violation of international law, resettling on occupied Ukrainian territory families from the poorer parts of the Russian Federation. Russian propaganda media, for example, showed the family in the photo above, from Chuvashia.\u00a0 The father is described as a \u201cmilitary serviceman, an SVO veteran, serving in Kherson oblast. It is claimed that the family received a warm welcome in occupied Kherson oblast, with the \u2018veteran\u2019s\u2019 wife working as a teacher of young children at the school where the three youngest children are enrolled. <\/p>\n
The aim, IRC-South reports, is for such families in the future to form the basis for the Russian occupation authorities in the region. \u00a0This was part of Russian policy of expansion over centuries and has been applied in occupied Crimea since 2014.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Such \u2018resettlements\u2019 are also used to facilitate Russia\u2019s total distortion of the historical facts about its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and armed seizure of territory where the population were almost all Ukrainian. A propaganda piece from Komsomolskaya Pravda, for example, asserts that \u201cNine residents of Kherson heroically died for Russia in SVO, while a further seven are missing\u201d.\u00a0 If men from occupied Kherson oblast were fighting Russia\u2019s war against Ukraine, they must have been forcibly mobilized, with this on occupied territory a war crime. \u00a0It is, in fact, likely that they were Russians, and the aggressor state is simply trying to rewrite the facts.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
This is probably why Moscow has been even more aggressive in forcing Ukrainians on newly occupied territory to take Russian citizenship than was the case in 2014 in occupied Crimea.\u00a0 \u00a0As well as denial of healthcare, social benefits, etc<\/a>. and difficulty getting a job, the invaders also demanded that people\u2019s homes and other property be \u2018re-registered\u2019 under Russian legislation, for which a person has to have a Russian passport.\u00a0 These are just a few of the methods used, with others including straight terror, with those refusing to take Russian citizenship likely to end up terrorized, abducted and \/ or \u2018deported\u2019 to government-controlled Ukrainian territory. <\/p>\n On 20 March 2025, Russian leader Vladimir Putin issued a decree essentially treating Ukrainians living on Ukrainian territory as \u2018foreign nationals\u2019 and giving them until 10 September to take Russian citizenship<\/a> (\u201cregulate their position\u201d) or face deportation.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Worth noting that, although Russia uses such coercion to foist its citizenship on those physically present on occupied territory, they are making it very difficult for Ukrainians to return, with a huge percentage of those\u00a0undergoing so-called \u2018filtration\u2019 at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow being refused<\/a>.\u00a0 Russia is, at the same time, encouraging its own citizens to move to occupied territory, as part of its demographic aggression and policy of destroying Ukrainian identity of illegally occupied Ukrainian land.<\/p>\n Russia has also escalated its so-called \u2018filtration\u2019 measures to stop Ukrainians who left when Russia invaded from returning to their homes on occupied territory, even where this is to see a dying relative. \u00a0Although the situation has now worsened, it has long been clear<\/a> that one motive is to steal Ukrainians\u2019 property by claiming it \u2018ownerless\u2019. (More details here<\/a>)<\/p>\n