Moscow has prepared a "development plan" for occupied Mariupol, which includes an increase in population by around 300,000 via migration from Russia, reported the National Resistance Center, an organization operated by Ukraine’s Special Forces.
Moscow reportedly intends on completing the transfer by 2035, the center wrote, citing sources in local underground resistance who obtained the occupation administration's documents.
The Kremlin started a program of cheap mortgages on properties in occupied parts of Ukraine, such as Donetsk Oblast’s Mariupol, to encourage Russians to move there, reads the report.
In addition, Moscow purportedly sends work migrants and civil servants from Russia’s “depressed" regions to the occupied territories.
At the same time, residents of Mariupol and other occupied settlements are forcibly deported to Russia, the National Resistance Center added.
On July 27, an exiled advisor to Mariupol mayor Petro Andriushchenko said that Moscow-installed occupation authorities in the city were illegally evicting residents from their homes if they couldn’t provide property ownership documents.
Mariupol, a once prosperous city on the Azov Sea coast, was home to more than 400,000 people. Russian troops heavily bombed Mariupol since the beginning of the full-scale invasion and occupied the city in May 2022.
Asami Terajima
(Updated: )
