Governance

Russia governs occupied Ukraine through a bureaucracy, not merely an army — and this theme reads that bureaucracy for what it reveals about the occupation's ambitions and its limits. Governance structures were stood up almost immediately: the first occupation administrators, such as Kostiantyn Ivashchenko in Mariupol and Volodymyr Saldo in Kherson, were appointed in April 2022 while fighting still raged. The early reliance on local collaborators gave way, from mid-2022, to direct federal administration, as Russian officials — Anton Koltsov chief among them — replaced local figures and extended Moscow's chain of command into occupied cities and regions.

Who actually governs is therefore, increasingly, Moscow itself. The September 2023 "elections" and the multi-level administrative system that followed — governors, legislative assemblies, appointed municipal heads — reproduce the template of any Russian region, with almost every post appointed rather than elected. A system of "patron regions," in which Russian oblasts adopt specific occupied territories and dispatch their own officials and contractors, deepens what amounts to internal colonisation.

What an occupying power owes its population, and what Russia actually provides, are two different things. Integration proceeds on several fronts at once — legal, administrative, financial, documentary and budgetary — binding residents to Russian law, the rouble, the tax system and, above all, the Russian passport, without which basic services are unreachable. Yet the occupation administrations' own budgets tell a story their propaganda does not: despite roughly USD 11.8 billion in federal infrastructure spending, the territories remain deeply subsidised and nowhere near self-sufficient.

Read together, the appointments, the staged votes, the patron-region networks and the financial documentation describe a colonial administrative regime that Russia is trying to make look ordinary — and the gap between that appearance and the underlying dependence is what this theme sets out to map.

Questions we ask

1. Who actually governs the occupied territories?
2. What obligations does an occupying power have, and what does it actually provide?
3. How is the integration of these territories into the Russian system taking place?
4. What do the occupation administrations' own documents reveal about their mechanisms of governance?

The full picture

Control over occupied territories is a fundamental prerequisite for ensuring the stability and longevity of any occupation. The formation of governance structures began immediately after Russia established partial control over Ukrainian territories, even before active hostilities had ended. Already during the active phase of territorial seizure, Russia launched a parallel process — the creation of a governance system — demonstrating the extent to which it relies on a bureaucratic rather than a purely military apparatus to administer occupied territory.

Notably, the first key leaders of the occupied territories following the full-scale invasion were appointed during the initial and most active phase of hostilities. On 6 April 2022, the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic" appointed Kostiantyn Ivashchenko as "head of the Mariupol administration." He became the first head of the city's occupation administration and one of the symbols of Russia's governance model based on local collaborators.¹ Significantly, this appointment took place while active fighting was still ongoing in Mariupol: the city's complete occupation occurred only on 19 May 2022, roughly six weeks later.

On 26 April 2022, Russian occupation forces appointed former Mayor of Kherson Volodymyr Saldo as head of the occupation military-civil administration of Kherson Oblast. This appointment took place well before any pseudo-referendums and marked the beginning of a full-fledged occupation government in the region.² Kherson was subsequently liberated in November 2022, yet Saldo's appointment itself occurred during the first active phase of the invasion. On 9 May 2022, Russia appointed former Ukrainian Member of Parliament and Zaporizhzhia Oblast Council deputy Yevhen Balytskyi as head of the occupation military-civil administration of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, extending the regional-administration model to a second southern region.³

The initial attempts to rely on local collaborators gradually gave way to a model of direct Russian administration, as federal officials, representatives of Russian patron regions and security structures increasingly assumed key governing functions. Beginning in June 2022, Russia transitioned to a mixed system in which officially appointed local collaborators remained in formal leadership positions while Russian bureaucrats gradually assumed the functions of real governance. On 8 June 2022, Vitaliy Khotsenko, previously a department director at the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade, was appointed Prime Minister of the so-called "Donetsk People's Republic" — a turning point at which the Kremlin openly demonstrated its distrust of local personnel and began replacing them with Russian officials.⁴

On 18 July 2022, former Governor of Russia's Vologda Oblast Anton Koltsov was appointed "Prime Minister of Zaporizhzhia Oblast," symbolising the shift from governance through local collaborators to direct federal administration at both local and regional levels.⁵ In June 2025, Koltsov was appointed Acting Head of the Mariupol Municipal District, replacing yet another local collaborator.⁶ This represents a critical milestone in the next phase of building the occupation's governance system: the Kremlin effectively abandoned any attempt to govern Mariupol through local personnel and placed the city under the direct administration of a Russian official.

The final consolidation and legalisation of Russian governance took place through the organisation of elections. The first elections to the so-called legislative assemblies and local councils in occupied Ukrainian territories were held on 8–10 September 2023 as part of Russia's Unified Voting Day, conducted simultaneously in the occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts.⁷ Following these elections, the occupation authorities established regional "legislative assemblies," "city councils," "district councils" and formally elected heads of municipalities. However, these elections took place under conditions of military occupation, forced passportisation, the absence of independent media and widespread repression, and therefore cannot be regarded as a free expression of the will of the population.

Following the "elections," the occupied territories adopted a multi-level governance system typical of Russian regions, comprising governors, legislative assemblies, governments, municipal district administrations (and, in cities with district divisions, district administrations) and city councils. With the exception of city councils and legislative assemblies, all positions are appointed rather than elected, ensuring complete and centralised control throughout the entire vertical of power extending to the Kremlin and the Government of the Russian Federation.

In addition, a system of so-called "patron regions" has emerged. Saint Petersburg assumed patronage over Mariupol and Melitopol; Penza Oblast over Polohy and Tokmak; and Chelyabinsk Oblast over Yasynuvata. Russian regions not only finance specific territories but also dispatch their own officials, municipal enterprises and contractors.⁸ In practice, a process of internal colonisation is taking place in the occupied territories.

Integration into the Russian system of governance is proceeding simultaneously in several directions. Under legal integration, not only Ukrainian legislation but also local normative acts adopted by occupation administrations are gradually being replaced by Russian law. Administrative integration establishes new government institutions on Russian administrative models. Financial integration has completed the transition to the Russian rouble, Russian banks and the Russian tax system. Documentary integration proceeds primarily through forced passportisation, which has become one of the principal instruments of population control:⁹ without a Russian passport, residents cannot access many basic services. Under budgetary integration, budget documents demonstrate a critical dependence on federal transfers, while procurement and tender documentation indicate the dominance of Russian contractors and the large-scale absorption of federal funding — Reuters reports that Russia has already allocated approximately USD 11.8 billion to infrastructure projects in occupied territories.¹⁰

Despite these investments, the occupied territories remain deeply subsidised and show no signs of economic self-sufficiency or genuine autonomy. More than three years after the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Russia has still failed to create an effective and legitimate system of local self-government. Instead, it is building a fully-fledged colonial administrative regime — and it is precisely through the analysis of this bureaucracy that one can understand how Russia seeks to make occupation appear ordinary, and why that effort remains incomplete.