- The seizure of church buildings in Melitopol is part of a broader system: repression of religious communities deemed disloyal is combined with the forced reassignment of churches, the seizure of private housing, and the redistribution of property and business assets. The "ownerless property" mechanism moves this practice from isolated abuses to a formalised occupation policy.
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Cases covered: Melitopol (Grace Church, Word of Life Church, Melitopol Christian Church), Mariupol (Good Changes Church), Makiivka (New Life Church), Donetsk (Latter-day Saints meetinghouses), Yevpatoria (Exaltation of the Holy Cross Church of the OCU), Horlivka and Debaltseve (Kingdom Halls).
How this report relates to TOT Insights research
The report connects two strands of the hub's own work. Its account of church seizures and forced ecclesiastical reassignment sits alongside Controlling Faith by Force, the hub's briefing on the systematic suppression of religious communities across the occupied territories, and its data companion. Its treatment of "ownerless property" as the mechanism that turns expulsion into permanent dispossession, including the homes of clergy who have fled, is the same mechanism documented at city level in Taking Homes, Giving Homes and followed through the compensation queue in Who Gets a Home?. Read together, they show religious property, private housing and business assets being redistributed through one administrative process rather than three.
The report's quantitative indicators come from different bodies using different methods and periods (OHCHR, BBC Verify, the US State Department, Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Rights Without Frontiers). The author presents them separately and does not add them together, and readers citing the figures should do the same.
Citation
Brytsyn, M. (2026). Confiscation of Religious and Private Property in the Occupied Territories of Ukraine: The Melitopol Case and the Broader Practice of the Russian Occupation Authorities. Brief analytical report, 11 September 2026. Religious Freedom Initiative, Mission Eurasia. Hosted by TOT Insights, King's College London.
Corrections to the hosted report are referred to the author; corrections to this page are reviewed by the research team.