Russia's Settler Colonial Programme in Occupied Ukrainian Territories

Russia's Settler Colonial Programme in Occupied Ukrainian Territories

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Russia is conducting a structurally organised settler colonial programme in the four occupied Ukrainian oblasts (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson) and in Crimea. This programme operates through interlocking mechanisms: state-funded civilian relocation schemes (the 'Zemsky' programmes), co-option of civil administrators from Russia, placement of Rosatom and federal ministry personnel, and the organic migration of construction workers, family members of military personnel, and ideologically motivated individuals. The programme aligns structurally with scholarly frameworks of settler colonialism as elaborated by Wolfe and Veracini, in particular the 'logic of elimination' through ethnic transfer, assimilation, and conceptual displacement rather than mass physical liquidation. Between 2022 and 2026, verifiable open-source data identifies over 80 named Russian civilians who have relocated to the occupied territories. Budget allocations for relocation programmes have more than doubled year-on-year, with projections indicating sustained expansion through at least 2027.

1. Theoretical Framework: Settler Colonialism

The Russian state's activities in the occupied Ukrainian territories exhibit characteristics consistent with settler colonialism as a structural analytical category. Settler colonialism, as defined by Patrick Wolfe, is "an inclusive, land-centred project that coordinates a comprehensive range of agencies... with a view to eliminating indigenous societies." Crucially, this elimination is not necessarily genocidal in the conventional sense - it operates as an ongoing structure rather than a discrete event, encompassing a range of transfer mechanisms that together constitute what Wolfe terms a 'structural genocide' (Wolfe, Journal of Genocide Research, 2006).

Lorenzo Veracini distinguishes settler colonialism from conventional colonialism through a key formulation: colonialism amounts to 'you work for me', whereas settler colonialism amounts to 'you go away'. Where colonialism reproduces a metropole–colony distinction, settler colonialism aims to erase it - the settler ultimately seeks not to extract but to replace. For Veracini, "triumphant settler colonialism is... a violent act against geography: settler colonialism turns someone else's place into space and then into place again" (Veracini, Settler Colonial Studies, 2011).

Russia's historical relationship with settler colonialism is well documented in the scholarly literature, although Russian authorities have consistently denied colonial intent. Khodarkovsky argues that "the Russian empire was a colonial empire in denial... its policies and practices were colonial in nature... particularly in the Asian parts of the empire, where Russian expansion evolved from a non-settler to a settler form of colonialism" (Khodarkovsky, Comparing Colonialism, 2020). The nineteenth-century colonisation of Siberia, initially driven by individual migrants evading taxation, then formalised and dramatically accelerated once the state 'placed itself at the head of the colonisation movement', provides a relevant historical parallel to the current trajectory in the occupied territories.

1.1 The 'Logic of Elimination' in the Occupied Territories

Veracini identifies several transfer mechanisms through which settler colonialism pursues elimination. Applying these to the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine:

• Ethnic transfer: Documented large-scale forced displacement of Ukrainian civilians and the forcible transfer of children, subject to International Criminal Court investigation.
• Transfer by assimilation: Restructuring of the educational curriculum, expansion of militarised youth programmes, and Russian language mandates across public institutions.
• Transfer by coerced lifestyle change: Elimination of Ukrainian civil society, media, and political organisations in occupied areas; replacement of Ukrainian administrative structures with Russian counterparts.
• Transfer by name confiscation: Russian historical claims appropriating Ukrainian cultural figures, events, and geography as Russian heritage within the occupation administration's educational materials.
• Transfer by conceptual displacement: Russian state communications consistently reframe the occupied population as Russian, not Ukrainian - denying a distinct Ukrainian identity while subsuming it within a broader 'Russian civilisational' framework.

The one mechanism with limited direct evidence is necropolitical transfer - the systematic military liquidation of the native population on ethnic grounds alone. However, this absence does not disqualify the settler colonial framework; as Wolfe notes, settler colonialism is "inherently eliminatory but not invariably genocidal."

2. Russia's Relocation Architecture: The Zemsky Programmes

The primary mechanism through which the Russian state is engineering civilian settlement in the occupied territories is the suite of 'Zemsky' (rural) professional relocation programmes. Originally created for domestic rural areas in Russia proper - Zemsky Doktor (doctors) from 2012, Zemsky Feldsher (paramedics) 2015, Zemsky Uchitel (teachers) 2020 - these programmes have been extended to the occupied Ukrainian oblasts with a doubled financial incentive: RUB 2 million for relocating to the occupied territories versus 1 million for rural Russia.¹

The programmes now cover five professional categories: teachers (Zemsky Uchitel), doctors and nursing staff (Zemsky Doktor/Feldsher), cultural workers (Zemsky Rabotnik Kultury, introduced 2025), and sports coaches (Zemsky Trener, introduced 2026). Contracts are signed for a minimum of five years in a settlement with under 50,000 residents.¹ The programmes are administered through territorial 'ministries' of the occupation administrations, which publish names, photographs, and biographical details of participants - generating an unusually rich open-source dataset. Key programme information is available via the Zemsky Uchitel portal and the Russian government's Zemsky Doktor guidance.

2.1 Budget Allocations and Scale

Programme	2025 Budget (RUB)	2025 Vacancies	2026 Budget (RUB)	2026 Vacancies
Zemsky Uchitel (Teachers)	600 million	599	1.18 billion	1,216
Zemsky Doktor (Doctors/Nurses)	-	~1,500	-	-
Zemsky Rabotnik Kultury (Culture)	1.1 billion	1,100	1.7 billion	~4,500 open
Zemsky Trener (Sports Coaches)	-	-	New in 2026	-

Sources: teachers (2025/2026 budget and vacancy figures): Izvestia²³; cultural workers (2025/2026 budget and vacancy figures): TASS⁴; Parlamentskaya Gazeta.⁵ Doctors/nurses (vacancy figure): source not confirmed; flag for re-sourcing.

2.2 Territorial Deployment (Known Figures, 2022–2026)

Territory	Teachers	Doctors/Nurses	Cultural Workers	Coaches (2026)
DPR (Donetsk)	7 (2025)	33 doctors/nurses (2025); 45 planned (2026)	8 (2025); 12 (2026)	6 (planned)
LPR (Luhansk)	13 (2024); 2 (2025)	11 (2024); ~30 (2025)	16 hired (2025)	32 (planned)
Zaporizhzhia Oblast	6 (2024); 2 (2025)	44 medical staff (2024–2025)	12 (2025)	18 (planned)
Kherson Oblast	2 (2025); 6 by 2028	36 doctors, 11 nurses by May 2025	15 (2025); 20 (2026)	Starting 2026

Sources: DPR Ministry of Education Telegram [archived]; DPR Ministry of Health Telegram (occupation administration source; no Wayback snapshot confirmed); LPR Ministry of Education Telegram [archived]; LPR Ministry of Health Telegram [archived]; Zaporizhzhia Ministry of Education Telegram (occupation administration source; no Wayback snapshot confirmed); Zaporizhzhia Ministry of Health Telegram (occupation administration source; no Wayback snapshot confirmed); Kherson Ministry of Health Telegram [archived].

Sourcing caveat: Figures in this table are drawn primarily from occupation administration Telegram channels and Russian federal ministry communications, which actively promote these programmes as evidence of normalisation in the occupied territories. Numbers may be overstated and should be treated as indicative maxima rather than verified counts. In at least one documented case (Zaporizhzhia Oblast, teachers), figures published by different sources within the same administration contradict one another. Cross-referencing against Ukrainian open-source intelligence databases is recommended before citing specific figures in formal reports.

3. Settler Typologies: Who Moves and Why

Open-source data from occupation administration Telegram channels, Russian media, and Ukrainian intelligence databases permits the identification of four primary settler typologies: economically motivated professionals; ideologically committed individuals; family proximity migrants (predominantly partners and families of military personnel); and career-opportunity administrators and technical specialists. These categories are neither exhaustive nor mutually exclusive, most individuals exhibit mixed motivations.

3.1 Economically Motivated Professionals

The Zemsky financial incentive of RUB 2 million (approximately £17,000 at 2025 exchange rates), equivalent to three to four years' average Russian regional salary, is a dominant stated motivation across the teacher and cultural worker cohorts. Participants frequently cite plans to purchase property, buy a car, or fund further education.

A secondary economic driver is the 2% subsidised mortgage rate available for property purchase in the occupied territories, which is well below Russia's prevailing market rate of 20+%. This has attracted a category of property investors and permanent migrants, particularly to Mariupol, which is marketed in Russian media as a coastal city with significant reconstruction investment and below-market property prices.

3.2 Ideologically Committed Settlers

A significant minority of documented settlers express explicitly ideological motivations: a sense of 'service to Russia', the framing of relocation as a patriotic duty, or prior volunteer activity in the region since 2014. This cohort is disproportionately represented among teachers, whose professional function in Russian-curriculum delivery carries a specific ideological dimension. Some participants in this category describe previous volunteering in Donbas hospitals or humanitarian aid convoys prior to 2022 as motivating factors in their decision to relocate.

3.3 Family Proximity Migrants

A recurring pattern, particularly among female participants in the Zemsky Doctor and Zemsky Uchitel programmes, is relocation driven by proximity to a spouse or partner serving in the Russian military. In several documented cases, the participant's husband was subsequently killed or declared missing in action. This migration pattern produces a structurally embedded civilian settler presence that is both personally motivated and state-enabled, as the Zemsky financial incentive operates as an additional pull factor for those already geographically proximate to the occupation zone.

3.4 Administrative and Technical Cadres

A distinct category comprises individuals placed by Russian federal structures into administrative roles: ministry officials, United Russia party branch heads, and Rosatom technical personnel at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP). Ukrainian intelligence databases, principally GUR War Sanctions⁶, Evocation, and Molfar Intelligence Institute, document over fifteen named Russian civil administrators who relocated to the occupied territories from 2022. Several of these individuals left Russia immediately following domestic corruption scandals, suggesting that appointment to occupation administrations may function partly as a mechanism for removing politically inconvenient figures from their home regions.

4. Policy Implications

The settler colonial dynamic in the occupied territories has several implications for policy that are distinct from those arising from the military occupation alone.

• Irreversibility risk: The structural parallel with historical settler colonialism is that the process becomes harder to reverse with scale and duration. The current Zemsky programme trajectory - budgets doubling annually, professional categories expanding - suggests a deliberate intent to reach a threshold beyond which demographic change is self-sustaining.
• Civilian entanglement: The predominantly civilian character of the settler population (teachers, doctors, cultural workers, construction managers) complicates post-war accountability and reintegration frameworks. Unlike military personnel, civilians recruited through the Zemsky programmes technically arrived under labour contracts rather than military orders.
• Children as long-term settlers: Multiple documented settlers relocated with children who are now enrolled in Russian-curriculum schools in the occupied territories. This creates a cohort whose formative education and social networks are in the occupied region, representing a longer-term demographic anchor.
• Intelligence and sanctions gaps: The Zemsky programme participants are generally not subject to international sanctions, despite their functional role in supporting the occupation administration's service delivery and legitimacy. Sanctions frameworks focused on military and political figures do not adequately capture this civilian settler layer.
• Source asymmetry: Occupation administration Telegram channels and local media actively publicise settler arrivals as propaganda showcasing 'normalisation'. This creates an unusually rich open-source dataset but requires calibration against likely overstatement of numbers and selectivity of profiles presented.

5. Sources and Methodology

This briefing draws on three categories of open-source data:

• Occupation administration channels: Territorial 'ministries' of education, health, and culture in DPR, LPR, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson publish named participant profiles as part of the Zemsky programme promotion. These represent Tier 1 sources - directly attributed, official, and corroborated across platforms.
• Ukrainian intelligence databases: GUR War Sanctions, Evocation, and Molfar provide cross-referenced profiles of individuals listed in Ukrainian accountability databases as associated with the occupation administration with verifiable Russian origin. These are treated as high-confidence where corroborated by non-Ukrainian sources.
• Social media and media interviews: Russian-language Telegram relocation channels, VKontakte, RuTube, and local media interviews provide organic settler testimony. Reliability varies; where individuals are identifiable only by first name or Telegram handle, these are treated as Tier 3 sources.

All source material was collected from publicly available platforms. No restricted or sensitive sources were used.