Six original Russian-language government resolutions, reproduced from the official legal information portal. Together they establish the "Zemsky" (rural) family of relocation programmes inside the federal state programmes for education, healthcare, culture and sport, and extend each of them, with a doubled payment, to the four Ukrainian regions Russia claims to have annexed in 2022. Resolution No. 1430 (2019) created "Zemsky Teacher"; No. 954 (2024) revised the "Zemsky Doctor" rules; No. 1700 (2024) set the teacher payment for the occupied regions; No. 1885 (2024) created "Zemsky Culture Worker"; No. 1274 (2025) created "Zemsky Coach"; No. 1094 (2025) tightened recovery of the payment from teachers who leave early.
The Zemsky programmes are the clearest formal mechanism through which the Russian state recruits civilians to move into occupied Ukrainian territory. Each pays a one-off lump sum to a teacher, doctor, cultural worker or sports coach who takes a post in a settlement with staff shortages and commits to remain for five years. The standard payment is one million roubles; in the Donetsk and Luhansk "People's Republics" and the occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts it is two million. The resolutions gathered here show the programme architecture in the government's own words: the rules for selection, the size of the payment, the five-year service obligation, the regional co-financing arrangements and, in the 2025 amendment, the procedure for recovering the money through the courts from a teacher who breaks the contract. They are the legal basis for the enhanced premium that this platform's settler-colonialism research treats as strong evidence of state encouragement of civilian transfer under Article 49(6) of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
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Resolution No. 1430 of 9 November 2019
Amends the state programme "Development of Education" (Resolution No. 1642 of 26 December 2017) by adding annex 23, the rules for the "Zemsky Teacher" programme: a one-off compensation payment to teachers who move to work in villages, settlements and towns of up to 50,000 inhabitants, against an obligation to work there for five years.
Resolution No. 954 of 13 July 2024
Amends the state programme "Development of Healthcare" (Resolution No. 1640 of 26 December 2017), the home of "Zemsky Doctor" and "Zemsky Feldsher". Paragraphs 1 and 7(a) of the rules set the payments for doctors and mid-level medical staff and provide the enhanced sum for those taking posts in the DPR, LPR, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts.
Resolution No. 1700 of 30 November 2024
Amends Resolution No. 1642. Section V, paragraph 4 sets the "Zemsky Teacher" payment at one million roubles in most regions and two million roubles for teachers who take posts in the DPR, LPR, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson Oblasts from 1 January 2025.
Resolution No. 1885 of 25 December 2024
Amends the state programme "Development of Culture" (Resolution No. 317 of 15 April 2014) by adding annex 37, the rules for "Zemsky Culture Worker": a payment to cultural workers who move to institutions in small settlements, with paragraphs 1 and 8(a) providing the two-million-rouble sum in the four occupied regions.
Resolution No. 1274 of 26 August 2025
Amends the state programme "Development of Physical Culture and Sport" (Resolution No. 1661 of 30 September 2021) to create "Zemsky Coach", paying coaches who relocate to sports institutions with staff shortages; paragraphs 1 and 9(a) again provide two million roubles for the four occupied regions.
Resolution No. 1094 of 24 July 2025
Amends annex 23 ("Zemsky Teacher"). New paragraph 11.1 provides that where a teacher returns the payment to the regional budget, or refuses to return it and the authority recovers it in court, the region must return the corresponding federal share to the federal budget. The amendment shows the state treating early departure as a breach to be pursued, not a risk to be absorbed.
Analytical note
Read together, the six acts show a single design applied across four professions: the same doubled premium, the same five-year bond and the same geographic targeting of the occupied regions. The comparison is built into the programme itself, since the same professional receives twice the sum for accepting a post in occupied territory as for moving within Russia. These are the instruments cited in TOT Insights research on settler colonialism and on the staffing of occupation schools, clinics and cultural institutions.