Ukraine's intelligence says Russia is engineering ethnocide in Ukraine. As of July 2026, 200,000 to 300,000 ethnic Russians are in occupied Crimea and Sevastopol, and the occupiers plan to resettle another 130,000 Russians to Sevastopol alone by 2042.
The colonization and Russification policy Russia is conducting on temporarily occupied Ukrainian territories bears the hallmarks of the war crime defined under Article 8, paragraph b, subparagraph viii of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. This means the transfer by an occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into occupied territory.
"The aggressor state Russia continues a targeted policy of ethnocide, whose goal is to erase Ukrainian identity and replace the local population with Russians and migrants from Central Asia, the North Caucasus, and other regions," HUR said.
Demographic collapse Russia caused
HUR says Russia has driven the situation of the Ukrainian population in the occupied territories to catastrophe. Birth rates are extremely low and death rates extremely high, both far exceeding even Russia's own averages.
In 2025, the natural population change in the occupied part of Donetsk Oblast was -9.9 per thousand, 2.4 times worse than Russia's overall figure. Over ten years, according to HUR, the population of Donbas has shrunk by nearly a third: from about 7.37 million in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts combined in 2001 to roughly 3.75 million by the start of 2024.
The collapse has causes beyond death rates. Ukrainians keep leaving occupied territory, driven out by active fighting, the sharp fall in medical and social services, repression, forced Russification, mobilization into the Russian occupation army, and the absence of property-rights protection.
How Russia moves its own people in
Russia brings its citizens into occupied Ukraine through special programs, benefits, and financial and career incentives, HUR says. As of 2024, the occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts held 200,000 ethnic Russians plus about 100,000 labor migrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus. Since the start of 2026 alone, some 10,000 such "labor migrants" have been registered in occupied Donetsk Oblast.
Most of the ethnic Russians moved in are people seconded from Russia to staff the occupation administrations, repressive apparatus, and budget institutions. Moscow sends medical workers, teachers, and builders; it has settled large numbers of so-called military pensioners and residents of remote Russian regions into occupied Crimea.
The incentives are substantial. Russians seconded to occupied Ukraine are paid double salary plus housing compensation. A month's posting can bring a Russian "official" more than $5,000, more than eight times Russia's average wage, per HUR. Programs modeled on Russia's "rural doctor" and "rural teacher" schemes require at least five years' service on occupied Ukrainian land.
Stolen homes handed to settlers
One incentive is the property of the Ukrainians who were driven out. Russia hands imported Russians ownership of land plots and stolen Ukrainian housing, HUR says. Stolen homes are sold through preferential mortgage programs, and land for participants in the war against Ukraine is given away free.
In 2025, Russia distributed 4,000 plots in Crimea to soldiers of its occupation army from various Russian regions. This is the mechanism EP has documented in Mariupol, where Russian authorities destroyed roughly 460 residential buildings and built about 50, marketing the new housing to Russian settlers through mortgage schemes rather than restoring homes for displaced Ukrainians.
Colonization is written into Russian planning documents
The scale of intent is set out in Russia's own "development plans." A document on target population figures for the Mariupol and Kalmius districts of occupied Donetsk Oblast projects the population rising from the current 228,000 to 518,000 by 2035, partly through the import of Russian citizens.
The colonization plans for occupied Crimea run to 2036 and 2042, with one key component being more "attractive conditions" to draw Russians to the peninsula.
