Main Intelligence Directorate: Russia plans to resettle hundreds of thousands of its citizens to the occupied territories of Ukraine
The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense stated that Russia continues to implement a policy of altering the demographic composition of the temporarily occupied territories by resettling its own citizens there and displacing the local population.
According to the Main Intelligence Directorate, as of July 2026, there were already 200,000–300,000 ethnic Russians in occupied Crimea and Sevastopol, and by 2042, the Kremlin plans to resettle another 130,000 people in Sevastopol alone.
The intelligence report also noted that the occupied parts of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions are already home to about 200,000 Russians and approximately 100,000 migrant workers from Central Asia and the Caucasus.
According to the Main Intelligence Directorate, to encourage relocation, Russia is offering higher salaries, housing rental compensation, free land plots, and preferential programs for acquiring real estate.
The agency emphasized that such a policy bears the hallmarks of a war crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, as it involves the transfer of the civilian population of the occupying state to the occupied territories.
Source: Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
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