Up to 800,000 Russian citizens have arrived illegally in Crimea during its occupation

Up to 800,000 Russian citizens have arrived illegally in Crimea since 2014, and about 100,000 Ukrainians have left the peninsula.

Source: Institute for the Study of War (ISW); Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union (UHHRU)

Details: The UHHRU said the key elements of the Russian policy on the territory of the occupied peninsula which have changed its demographics were:

• preferential mortgage lending;
• relocation of the Russian military, law enforcement officers, government, medical and educational workers, judges, and their families;
• expulsion of Ukrainians to mainland Ukraine;
• encouragement of Ukrainian citizens to move to Russia.

The UHHRU noted that Russia had conducted an identical policy in other occupied territories after the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

However, at the moment, the colonisation policy is not as successful as in Crimea since the intensity of hostilities makes it hard to motivate Russians civilians to move to the occupied territories in great numbers.

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