Mariupol Property Seizure Programme: Evidence from Occupation Administrative Records

MARIUPOL PROPERTY SEIZURE PROGRAMME

Evidence from Russian Occupation Administrative Records, October 2024 – June 2025

Date: April 2026

Source access: Ukrainian Telegram monitoring channels

SUMMARY

Russian occupation authorities in Mariupol are conducting a systematic programme of property registration and transfer across two parallel tracks: a residential programme documented in a January 2025 registry of 5,979 apartments¹ and a commercial programme documented across 20 monthly snapshots from October 2024 to June 2025.⁴ Both draw on the same legal mechanism - the бесхозяйность (ownerlessness) procedure - transposing Russian federal property law onto occupied Ukrainian territory.

These datasets constitute the occupation administration's own administrative record of property dispossession, not external estimates. Their combined significance lies in the scale, official provenance, longitudinal coverage, and granular address-level detail they provide.

RESIDENTIAL SEIZURE PROGRAMME

Scale and status. The January 2025 residential registry documents 5,979 properties across Mariupol's four administrative districts.¹ Of these, 5,190 (86.8%) are classified as exhibiting full signs of ownerlessness. The remainder are contested by heirs (145 properties, 2.4%), claimed by interested parties (574, 9.6%), or already transferred to municipal housing stock (70, 1.2%). The Zhovtnevyi district accounts for the largest share (2,419 properties, 40.5%), reflecting its proximity to the Azovstal industrial zone and city centre.

District distribution.

Reclamation. 2,222 owners submitted title documents to contest ownerlessness classification before November 2024² representing a document submission rate of approximately 37% of registry entries. Successful reclamation rates are not separately recorded in available data. This figure is analytically significant in two directions: it demonstrates that the bureaucratic reclamation pathway formally exists and is being used, while simultaneously confirming that structural barriers - displacement, physical danger, information inaccessibility - prevent the large majority from accessing it. The reclamation list constitutes a resistance dataset: each entry represents an owner who navigated the occupation's administrative system to assert a property claim.

COMMERCIAL SEIZURE PROGRAMME

Scale and composition. A parallel registry of non-residential (нежилой фонд) properties documents approximately 420–660 unique commercial properties across 20 monthly snapshots from October 2024 to June 2025.⁴ The registry is broadly stable in size, suggesting the programme reached near-saturation of easily identifiable targets by late 2024, with incremental additions of 5–25 new properties per subsequent snapshot.

Nature of seized properties. The median commercial property is 70 square metres - small retail premises. The most common previous uses are shops (магазины, the largest single category), cafés, hairdressers, pharmacies, and food retailers. This is not primarily a seizure of industrial or institutional assets: it is the systematic registration as ownerless of the everyday commercial infrastructure of a Ukrainian city.

Notable individual seizures. The commercial registry includes several properties of particular significance: the Azovsteel hotel (проспект Победы, 16; 8,386 sqm); PUMB bank headquarters (проспект Ильича, 136; 7,265 sqm); ДК Искра cultural centre (5,643 sqm); two cinemas (Победа and Буревесник); two Protestant churches; a children's charitable centre (ул. Трудовая, 21, registered twice); the Siltpo and ATB supermarket chain locations (ATB appears 58 times across the dataset, indicating systematic targeting of a Ukrainian commercial brand); and Port City shopping centre (90,000 sqm, the largest single seizure by floor area).⁴

Temporal pattern. The October 2024 initial snapshot registered 391 unique commercial properties.⁴ A significant expansion occurred in December 2024 (628 properties), followed by stabilisation. By June 2025, the registry stood at approximately 419 properties in the most recent snapshot, suggesting some churn as properties cycle through the process.

LEGAL MECHANISM

The operative legal instrument is Decree №336 of the Mariupol City District Administration (20 August 2024), signed by Deputy Head B.N. Perepechai.³ The decree cites Russia's annexation law (5-ФКЗ, October 2022), DPR law 66-РЗ on identifying and managing ownerless property, and a Rosreestr procedural order - constituting a deliberate transposition of Russian federal property law onto occupied Ukrainian territory. The procedure requires no judicial determination: municipal authorities self-certify ownerlessness on the basis of physical inspection, without notification of or consent from the legal owner. Properties are then registered with the territorial office of Roskadastr for DPR and enter the municipal property stock.

SIGNIFICANCE

Permanent displacement mechanism. By transferring properties to municipal ownership, the occupation forecloses the practical conditions for return even for displaced residents who would wish to return. This constitutes a material mechanism of permanent population displacement operating alongside and independently of kinetic violence. Of 5,979 properties flagged as ownerless, approximately 37% of owners (2,222) submitted documents contesting the designation within the recorded window; the success rate of those submissions is not recorded in the available occupation data. The registry mechanism places the burden on owners to come forward, and a majority did not submit documents within the recorded window; no permanent-dispossession rate can be calculated from the available data.⁶

Economic dependency. The commercial seizure programme eliminates the pre-war economic infrastructure that would support any return of the pre-war population. The systematic targeting of Ukrainian commercial brands (ATB, Сільпо), cultural institutions (cinemas, cultural centres, sports clubs), and community organisations (churches, charities) is consistent with a broader pattern of identity and economic replacement documented elsewhere in the Hub.

Accountability and reparations.These datasets provide address-level primary source documentation of property dispossession drawn from the perpetrating authority's own administrative records. They are directly relevant to: ongoing war crimes documentation; future property restitution and reparations frameworks; accountability processes involving the administration of occupied territory; and analysis of demographic transformation in Mariupol.

PRIMARY SOURCES