Two original Russian-language acts. The regional law of March 2024 (10 pages) created the DPR procedure for declaring dwellings "ownerless" and taking them into municipal ownership. The federal constitutional law of December 2025 (82 pages) amended the four admission laws to write a version of that regime into federal law for all four occupied regions. Both are reproduced from the official legal information portal.
These two laws are the legal engine of dispossession in the occupied territories. The DPR law of 2024 defines the "signs of ownerless property" that trigger the procedure: no payment for the dwelling and utilities for a year before identification, no registered right in the Russian Unified State Register of Real Estate, and non-use of the dwelling. Any person or public body may report a dwelling; the municipal authority then makes enquiries and, if no owner comes forward with Russian documents, takes the flat or house into municipal ownership. Since Ukrainian owners who fled cannot register their property without a Russian passport and cannot safely return, the definition captures the homes of the displaced. Law No. 4-FKZ of 15 December 2025 inserted article 21.1 into Law No. 5-FKZ and its counterparts, providing that dwellings with signs of ownerless property are recognised as the property of the region or its municipalities, and set the order of priority for their reallocation, which as reported runs from residents affected by hostilities to doctors, teachers, the security services and the military. TOT Insights research on Mariupol housing, on the settler dataset and on de-Ukrainianisation treats these acts as the point at which removal of Ukrainians and emplacement of Russians are coupled in law.
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DPR Law No. 66-RZ of 21 March 2024
Article 1. Adopted under Law No. 5-FKZ and the Civil Code, the law sets the procedure for identifying, recording and using dwellings with signs of ownerless property in the DPR, for recognising municipal ownership of them and for disposing of them. It applies to houses, flats and rooms.
Article 2: signs of ownerless property. (1) non-payment for the dwelling and communal services for one year before identification; (2) absence of a registered right of ownership in the Unified State Register of Real Estate; (3) non-use of the dwelling, including where this creates a threat to its safety or to the life and health of others.
Articles 3 to 5. Municipal bodies act on their own initiative; information may come from any natural or legal person or public authority; the authorised body then requests confirmation from the tax service, the property register, utility enterprises and property registries before proceeding.
Later articles. Publication of notices, the period for owners to come forward, the decision to take the dwelling into municipal ownership and the rules for allocating it.
Federal Constitutional Law No. 4-FKZ of 15 December 2025
Article 1(6). Inserts article 21.1 into Law No. 5-FKZ: "residential houses, flats, rooms ... having signs of ownerless property are recognised as the property of the Donetsk People's Republic or the property of its municipal formations", with parallel provisions for the LPR, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts. The article sets the signs of ownerless property at federal level, the procedure for identification and the priority categories for reallocation.
Analytical note
The definition of "ownerless" is built around Russian registration. A Ukrainian owner who has not registered under Russian law and who cannot return is, by construction, absent. The federal law then vests the home in the occupation authorities and directs it to the occupation's own personnel. This is the legal form of the coupling that settler-colonial analysis describes: dispossession that makes housing available and preference that redirects it.