Russia plans to resettle 114,000 citizens in occupied Ukrainian territories over 20 years

Russian authorities have drawn up plans to resettle nearly 114,000 of their citizens in occupied Ukrainian territories over the next 20 years, according to reporting by the independent journalists' cooperative Bereg. The group used the city of Melitopol in Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region — occupied by Russian troops as early as February 25, 2022 — as a case study of who is moving there and what occupation has meant for local Ukrainians.

Journalists spoke with Russians who resettled in Melitopol, longtime local residents, and members of the Ukrainian nonviolent resistance movement Zla Mavka.

A family torn apart

Among those interviewed was Lyudmila Plachkova, 34, who was born and raised in Melitopol before leaving for Bulgaria because of the occupation. Her parents, Tatyana and Oleg, had run a family business, including a café her mother opened in 2013. After Russian forces entered the city, the family sheltered from shelling and later joined pro-Ukrainian rallies.

Plachkova described how Melitopol changed under occupation, as local entrepreneurs and young people left while newcomers from Russia arrived. In September 2023, officers of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) broke into her parents' apartment, mistreated her grandmother, and took both parents away. According to accounts from fellow detainees, her mother was denied food, held in unheated conditions without sanitation, and tortured during interrogations. In February 2024, she was hospitalized in a coma and died in May of that year. The family still has no information about her father's whereabouts; the FSB and detention facilities say they have no record of him.

Bereg reports that Plachkova personally knows of at least six similar cases of abduction, torture, or arbitrary deportation of civilians in Melitopol alone. The independent outlet iStories had already documented in October 2023 a broader pattern of abductions and torture in the occupied city, including cases involving school principals, teachers, and residents suspected of partisan activity.