TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine approaches its fourth year, approximately 20% of Ukrainian territory remains under Moscow’s control, creating severe humanitarian challenges for the estimated 3-5 million residents in occupied regions. These areas face critical shortages in housing, utilities, and healthcare services, with President Vladimir Putin himself acknowledging “many truly pressing, urgent problems” in the illegally annexed territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia.
The occupation has brought systematic cultural imposition, with Russian citizenship, language, and curriculum forced upon residents through educational materials and institutional policies. According to displaced Ukrainians and human rights organizations, many civilians live under constant fear of persecution, with numerous documented cases of imprisonment, torture, and extrajudicial killings.
Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Center for Civil Liberties, reports that Russia has established “a vast network of secret and official detention centers where tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians” are held indefinitely without formal charges. Russian officials have consistently refused to address allegations from UN human rights experts regarding systematic torture of both civilians and prisoners of war.
Personal accounts reveal the brutal reality of occupation. Inna Vnukova described spending initial occupation days hiding in a damp basement with her family in Luhansk’s Kudriashivka village while soldiers intimidated residents, established checkpoints, and looted homes amid constant shelling. After fleeing with her teenage son in March 2022, her husband Oleksii—a court security officer—faced death threats from Russian soldiers before eventually escaping. The village’s population has dwindled from 800 to approximately 150 remaining residents, whom Oleksii describes as “just surviving” rather than living.
The port city of Mariupol, besieged for weeks before falling in May 2022, suffered particularly devastating losses. The bombing of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater on March 16, 2022, represents the war’s single deadliest known attack against civilians, killing nearly 600 people according to AP investigations. Most of the city’s half-million residents fled, but those remaining faced extreme conditions, with many obtaining Russian citizenship primarily to access medical care and compensation for destroyed homes.
Infrastructure throughout occupied territories has deteriorated dramatically due to warfare and neglect. In Alchevsk (Luhansk region), over half of homes lack heating during bitter winter conditions, necessitating the establishment of five emergency warming stations. Donetsk residents report water shortages so severe that trucks deliver water to apartment blocks, though supplies frequently freeze solid in winter temperatures, leading to constant conflicts over resources.
Moscow actively encourages Russian citizens to relocate to occupied territories through incentive programs, offering benefits including salary supplements for teachers, medical professionals, and cultural workers who commit to five-year residencies. Meanwhile, original residents face systematic discrimination in housing allocation, with new apartments typically sold to Russian newcomers rather than those who lost homes during combat operations.
The security situation remains dire for those suspected of Ukrainian sympathies. Stanislav Shkuta from Nova Kakhovka described narrowly avoiding arrest multiple times before reaching Ukrainian-controlled territory in 2023, recounting incidents where Russian soldiers forced bus passengers “to strip to the waist to check for Ukrainian tattoos.” Mykhailo Savva of the Center for Civil Liberties confirms that “Russian special services continue to identify disloyal Ukrainians, extract confessions, and continue to detain people” through document checks and mass searches.
Human rights organizations document that Russia employed “filtration camps” early in the conflict to identify potentially disloyal individuals, targeting government workers, military relatives, journalists, educators, and politicians. Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets estimates approximately 16,000 civilians have been illegally detained, though the actual number may be significantly higher due to incommunicado detentions.