‘Your apartments have been sold’ How Russia is stripping Ukrainians of their property in Crimea
In occupied Crimea, corrupt notaries are helping transfer ownership of Ukrainians’ apartments to Russian military personnel. It’s just one of several schemes the Kremlin-installed authorities are using to strip Ukrainians of their property — especially those who refused to take Russian citizenship. RFE/RL’s Crimean service, Krym.Realii, looked into how Russia has systematized the seizure of Ukrainian-owned homes across the occupied peninsula. Meduza shares an abridged English-language version of the outlet’s findings.
Olena Kolisnichenko and her mother, Svitlana, found out someone was living in their apartment in occupied Crimea after they received a utility bill with someone else’s name on it: Server Kurseitovich Seitumer.
Back in 2007, Olena bought two apartments in a new building in the Crimean city of Feodosia. Two years later, she and her mother moved there from Kyiv. After Russia occupied and annexed the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014, both women refused to take Russian citizenship.
“We were against Russian policy. I didn’t support the aggression,” Svitlana said. “Since we have apartments there, I got a [Russian] temporary residency permit.”
In 2019, the two women traveled to Kyiv to deal with a family matter. Then the COVID-19 pandemic hit. After that came Russia’s full-scale invasion. Ultimately, Olena and Svitlana never made it back. A neighbor had been watching over the apartments — they’d left her the keys — but after the full-scale war began, she stopped responding.
Then, in May 2024, a note from a different neighbor appeared on their door in Kyiv: “Your apartments have been sold. Call me, it’s urgent.”
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According to Myrotvorets, an unofficial Ukrainian site that compiles information about people accused of colluding with Russia, Seitumer — the man named on the utility bill — was a Ukrainian Navy sergeant who switched sides during the annexation. Ukraine’s National Police confirmed to reporters that he is wanted on charges of desertion.
Svitlana suspects their former neighbor handed over the keys voluntarily. “I think it was our neighbor, Lyudmyla Lyakhovych, and her husband, Vitalii Lyakhovych. He’s military,” she said. Open-source records identify Vitalii Lyakhovych as a lieutenant colonel and test engineer who once served in Ukraine’s Air Force in Feodosia but later defected to Russia.
“At one point, [Lyudmyla] messaged me asking, ‘Why don’t you let soldiers use your apartment?’” Svitlana recalled. “I told her we couldn’t travel there. When she realized this, I think that’s when she started renting it out.”
Olena and Svitlana now believe a local notary in Crimea used forged documents and straw buyers to draft a fake power of attorney for the apartment’s sale. “Then they transferred the title to this serviceman,” Olena said. “Somehow, he even managed to get a housing subsidy from Russia’s Defense Ministry.”
The Kolisnichenkos have filed multiple complaints with Crimea’s Kremlin-appointed authorities. At first, they were told no criminal investigation would be opened. Eventually, one was. The peninsula’s Moscow-controlled notary chamber also launched a disciplinary case against the notary involved. But the women have heard nothing further.
“There are already seven apartments like this in my building,” said Olena. “So it’s clearly already a widespread phenomenon. Reportedly, criminal cases are finally being opened in Feodosia. At first, they didn’t want to do this because this is an occupying government, and we’re Ukrainian citizens.”
The dispossession of property has become one of Russia’s tools for pushing Ukrainians out of Crimea. The Kremlin has led a sweeping campaign of so-called “nationalization,” which spiked in 2014–2015 and has since expanded in scope following Russia’s full-scale invasion.
“In 2022, they added a new category — citizens of so-called ‘unfriendly countries,’” said Mykyta Petrovets, a legal expert at Ukraine’s Regional Center for Human Rights. “That includes basically all European nations — and of course, Ukraine. If you oppose Russian aggression or support sanctions, your property can be confiscated on that basis alone.”
‘Erasing Ukrainian presence’
In 2008, Yuliia Stezhko, a resident of Ukraine’s Kyiv region, bought a small plot of land in Alupka, on a hillside with a view of the sea. She paid $100,000 for it.
“It was bought with our family’s entire savings,” she said. “My parents had just retired, and we were thinking about having kids. The plan was to build a summer home there — maybe even move eventually. Like a lot of Ukrainians, we associated childhood and family vacations with Crimea. Plus, my maternal grandfather is buried there.”
Yuliia got a building permit, ran utilities to the property, and commissioned a design for the house. But after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, she never went back.
Then, in March 2020, Vladimir Putin signed a decree designating nearly the entire peninsula as a so-called “border territory” of the Russian Federation — a move that banned “foreigners” from owning land in Crimea. According to legal expert Mykyta Petrovets, the decree became yet another tool for property dispossession.
“They gave landowners about a year to sell or transfer their property,” Petrovets said. “After that, the process became essentially forced sales through the courts. Now, many of these plots are being auctioned off.”
Under Ukrainian law, nothing has changed — Ukrainian citizens still legally own their land. But the Russian-installed authorities in Crimea have begun publishing lists of addresses and cadastral numbers for properties they intend to confiscate. According to documentation collected by the Regional Center for Human Rights, over the past three years, the number of Crimean land parcels registered to so-called “foreign nationals” has dropped by 50 percent — from over 11,000 to just 5,000.
Yuliia doesn’t know what has happened to her land in Alupka.
“According to their regulations, my land should have been confiscated because I didn’t re-register it under a Russian citizen’s name, and I didn’t take Russian citizenship myself,” she said. “It was supposed to be auctioned off — for peanuts, of course — and somehow that money was supposed to be sent to me. But a long time has passed, and I’ve heard absolutely nothing.”
After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Ukraine’s Justice Ministry filed an inter-state lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), accusing Russia of systematic human rights violations in the occupied territory — including the illegal seizure of property. In June 2024, the court ruled in Ukraine’s favor. It declared Russia’s actions unlawful, including the imposition of Russian law in Crimea.
But the legal victory is largely symbolic for now. Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe in March 2022 and formally ceased to be a party to the ECHR that September. Soon after, Russian lawmakers passed legislation refusing to recognize the court’s decisions.
Even so, there are currently 1,101 individual complaints before the ECHR from Ukrainian citizens whose rights were violated in Crimea. Roughly 60 percent of those cases involve property confiscation.
Meanwhile, Russian officials continue to publicize their efforts to seize and redistribute property in Crimea. Larisa Kulinich, the Russian-installed minister for property and land relations in Crimea, recently announced that 900 properties were “nationalized” in 2024. The sale of those assets, she claimed, brought 2.8 billion rubles ($34.9 million) into the regional budget. Many of the confiscated properties are now being offered as rewards to Russian soldiers fighting against Ukraine.
Human rights advocates say the so-called “nationalization” of property in Crimea is part of a broader effort to displace Ukrainians and replace them with Russian citizens.
“It’s clearly aimed at erasing Ukrainian presence — banning and preventing Ukrainian nationals from acquiring property in the occupied territory,” said Petrovets. “The long-term goal is to create a future narrative in which Ukrainian citizens and their property were never here. Only Russian residents with Russian passports.”
Despite the odds, Yuliia Stezhko is determined to fight for her land. She filed a complaint with the ECHR, and the case is now under review. “I have nothing to lose,” she said. “And if the court rules in my favor, it could affirm my ownership of this land at the international level.”
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