‘We’ve seen this somewhere in history before, haven’t we?’ Inside Russia’s plan to resettle 114,000 of its people in occupied Ukraine.

Russia is planning to resettle nearly one hundred fourteen thousand of its own citizens into occupied Ukrainian territory over the next twenty years, according to reporting by the independent journalists' cooperative Bereg, translated here by Meduza. Using the city of Melitopol as a case study, Bereg spoke with Russian resettlers, longtime Ukrainian residents, and the local resistance movement Zla Mavka to document what the occupation looks like on the ground. One woman told Bereg her parents were abducted by Russia's FSB in September 2023 after refusing to recognize Russian rule, and that her mother was tortured and later found in a coma with untreated injuries. As Meduza tells it, the account is part of a broader pattern of population transfer and repression documented since Russian forces first entered Melitopol in February 2022.

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