Topic 5: Passportisation and Property Seizure

1. Artman, Vincent M. 'Documenting Territory: Passportisation, Territory, and Exception in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.' Geopolitics 18, no. 3 (2013): 682–704.

The foundational academic study of Russian passportisation policy, using Agamben's theory of 'exception' to analyse how the mass distribution of passports in Abkhazia and South Ossetia transformed Russia's relationship to these territories from soft to hard power. Demonstrates passportisation is not merely a diplomatic tool but a biopolitical mechanism that fundamentally alters the meaning of sovereignty and territory. Essential theoretical grounding for any analysis of the Ukraine passportisation programme.

2. Burkhardt, Fabian. Russia's 'Passportisation' of the Donbas: The Mass Naturalisation of Ukrainians Is More Than a Foreign Policy Tool. SWP Comment No. 41. Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, August 2020.

An authoritative policy analysis arguing that Russia's Donbas passportisation simultaneously destabilises geopolitics, replenishes Russia's shrinking labour force, and permanently entrenches territorial disputes. Documents the 2019 presidential decrees and places passportisation within Russia's 'compatriot policy.' Directly relevant to the argument that passportisation functions as a precursor to forced military mobilisation.

3. Bescotti, Elia, Fabian Burkhardt, Maryna Rabinovych, et al. 'Passportization: Russia's Humanitarian Tool for Foreign Policy, Extra-Territorial Governance, and Secessionism.' Ethnopolitics 21, no. 5 (2022): 536–555.

A comparative multi-author analysis arguing passportisation creates 'nested sovereignty' — a layer of Russian legal personhood over another state's population — that can then be invoked to justify military intervention. Covers Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, and Donbas. Key for the historical continuity argument across multiple occupation contexts.

4. Yale Humanitarian Research Lab / Conflict Observatory. Forced Passportization in Russia-Occupied Areas of Ukraine. New Haven: Yale School of Public Health, August 2023.

The most comprehensive empirical documentation of the post-2022 coercive passportisation programme, using satellite imagery, OSINT, and field reports. Documents systematic denial of medical care, employment, and property rights to those without Russian passports. Demonstrates the direct link between passportisation and forced conscription: Russian passport = eligibility for military service against Ukraine.

5. Peters, Anne. 'Passportisation: Risks for International Law and Stability.' EJIL:Talk! (blog), 2019. Parts I and II.

A two-part legal analysis by the director of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law, arguing Russian passportisation violates the prohibition on extraterritorial collective naturalisation and several general principles of international law. Legally authoritative; essential for contextualising passportisation within the framework of international law violations that include but exceed the trafficking and slavery framework.

6. OHCHR. Ten Years of Occupation: Human Rights in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol, Ukraine. Geneva: OHCHR, 28 February 2024.

Documents a decade of practices — forced passportisation, unlawful conscription, political persecution of Crimean Tatars — providing the crucial historical continuity that demonstrates these practices pre-date February 2022. Essential for the argument that what is happening in newly occupied territories is a system, not opportunistic violence — the same playbook rehearsed in Crimea since 2014.

7. US Department of State. 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report: Russia. Washington, D.C.: US State Department, September 2025.

The most recent TIP Russia report confirms that Russia-occupation authorities placed Ukrainian citizens on a 'controlled persons registry' restricting their ability to travel, bank, marry, or drive — a documented administrative mechanism of control over a captive population closely analogous to conditions of enslavement. The 'controlled persons registry' with its restrictions on movement, banking, and marriage constitutes the closest documented mechanism to the legal definition of slavery (exercise of powers attaching to the right of ownership) under the 1926 Slavery Convention and the Allain-Hickey framework.

→ Also relevant to Topic 2: The Enslavement and Forced Labour Frame — 'controlled persons registry' as documented mechanism of ownership-equivalent control.

8. Lieber Institute. Seizure of Private Real Property and Transfer of Civilians into Occupied Territory. Articles of War / Ukraine Symposium, Lieber Institute, June 2025. https://lieber.westpoint.edu/seizure-private-real-property-transfer-civilians-occupied-territory/

Analyses Russia's inventory of 251,750 real estate objects in occupied Ukraine and their systematic nationalisation; documents the IHL prohibition on an occupying power transferring its own civilian population into occupied territory (GC IV); concludes that Russia's mass real property seizure combined with settlement of Russian nationals is unlawful under both treaty law and customary IHL. Provides the legal framework for treating property expropriation, population transfer, and forced Russification as integrated elements of a single unlawful occupation policy.

9. OHCHR/HRMMU. General Assembly Report A/80/315. Geneva: OHCHR, August 2025. https://ukraine.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/2025-11/n2521410.pdf

Documents expropriation of at least 29,697 properties listed as potentially abandoned; administrative persecution for expressions of Ukrainian identity; the ICJ January 2024 judgment finding Russia violated ICERD through educational policies in Crimea. Provides the most recent General Assembly-level OHCHR assessment of Russian violations in Ukraine.

→ Full entry in Topic 8: Evidence Base (A8)

10. Martin, Terry. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Analyses the Soviet state's paradoxical promotion and then violent suppression of national identities. Martin's concept of 'ethnoterritory' and his documentation of mass deportations of groups deemed security threats are foundational for understanding how Russia's treatment of Ukrainians fits within a longer Soviet logic of identity management. Directly relevant to the passportisation and Russification analysis in occupied territories.

→ Also relevant to Topic 7: The Occupation as a System — Soviet ethnoterritory logic as foundational context.