{"id":13938,"date":"2025-08-04T10:45:04","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T10:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/04\/home-by-home-russia-is-selling-occupied-ukraine-to-russians\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T13:56:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T13:56:09","slug":"home-by-home-russia-is-selling-occupied-ukraine-to-russians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/08\/04\/home-by-home-russia-is-selling-occupied-ukraine-to-russians\/","title":{"rendered":"Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li> Home <\/li>\n<li> E-Paper <\/li>\n<li> DPL T20 2025 <\/li>\n<li> Taylor Swift <\/li>\n<li> WWE SummerSlam 2025 <\/li>\n<li>  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/crickit_anim_logo2x-1.gif\" alt=\"Cricket in L1\" title=\"Cricket\"\/>  <\/li>\n<li> India vs England Live <\/li>\n<li> HT Premium <\/li>\n<li> HT The Next Voice <\/li>\n<li> US News <\/li>\n<li> Games <\/li>\n<li> HTCity <\/li>\n<li>  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1x1-white-1.png\" alt=\"HT100 in L1\"\/>  <\/li>\n<li> India <\/li>\n<li> World <\/li>\n<li> Entertainment <\/li>\n<li> Astrology <\/li>\n<li> Real Estate <\/li>\n<li> Trending <\/li>\n<li> Lifestyle <\/li>\n<li> Education <\/li>\n<li> Business <\/li>\n<li> Cities <\/li>\n<li> Latest News <\/li>\n<li>  + 16 more\n<ul>\n<li> HT The Next Voice <\/li>\n<li> US News <\/li>\n<li> Games <\/li>\n<li> HTCity <\/li>\n<li> ht100 <\/li>\n<li> India <\/li>\n<li> World <\/li>\n<li> Entertainment <\/li>\n<li> Astrology <\/li>\n<li> Real Estate <\/li>\n<li> Trending <\/li>\n<li> Lifestyle <\/li>\n<li> Education <\/li>\n<li> Business <\/li>\n<li> Cities <\/li>\n<li> Latest News <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li> Parliament Monsoon Session <\/li>\n<li> Shibu Soren Death <\/li>\n<li> Delhi Weather <\/li>\n<li> August Monthly Horoscope <\/li>\n<li> Bihar Election <\/li>\n<li> Photos <\/li>\n<li> Century of Leadership <\/li>\n<li> Web Stories <\/li>\n<li> Sports <\/li>\n<li> Bengaluru News <\/li>\n<li> Delhi News <\/li>\n<li> Mumbai News <\/li>\n<li> Technology <\/li>\n<li> Quickreads <\/li>\n<li> Daily Digest <\/li>\n<li> Following <\/li>\n<li> Games <\/li>\n<li> + 11 more\n<ul>\n<li> Century of Leadership <\/li>\n<li> Web Stories <\/li>\n<li> Sports <\/li>\n<li> Bengaluru News <\/li>\n<li> Delhi News <\/li>\n<li> Mumbai News <\/li>\n<li> Technology <\/li>\n<li> Quickreads <\/li>\n<li> Daily Digest <\/li>\n<li> Following <\/li>\n<li> Games <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>               Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/wsj.png\" alt=\"wsj-logo\"\/>WSJ     Updated on: Aug 04, 2025 04:15 pm IST       <\/p>\n<h2>Kremlin-linked construction firms reap profits from redevelopment of housing destroyed by Russia\u2019s invasion.<\/h2>\n<p>In a brochure, the property developer touts the \u201cmajestic style\u201d of the building\u2019s architecture and its prime location just a 15-minute walk from the sea, adding a caveat: It was damaged during \u201cmilitary events.\u201d<!--more--><\/p>\n<figure>    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/im-89716922_1754301381895_1754304185485-1.jpg\" alt=\"Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians\" title=\"Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians\"\/>  PREMIUM<figcaption>Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The building that once stood there was in fact demolished by developers after Russia conquered Mariupol in a brutal onslaught that killed thousands of people and devastated the Ukrainian port city\u2019s housing stock.<\/p>\n<p>Residents of the Clock House counted themselves lucky to survive, but are now excluded from the redevelopment of the building, which has been sold largely to newcomers from Russia.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe, the previous owners, don\u2019t have the right to be there,\u201d said Elena Pudak, whose mother owned a spacious apartment in the building but now lives in Germany.<\/p>\n<p>Once a landmark of Mariupol\u2019s unique heritage, the Clock House now stands as a monument to Russia\u2019s transformation of the city for both profit and its own political designs. Across occupied territory, Russia-backed authorities have seized thousands of apartments after declaring them \u201cownerless,\u201d leaving the Ukrainians who fled faced with growing barriers to return and prove their ownership or claim compensation.<\/p>\n<p>Newcomers from Russia, meanwhile, enjoy a range of perks, such as 2% mortgage rates on new building developments.<\/p>\n<p>The strategy of replacing the people who once lived in conquered territories with ethnic Russians is one that Moscow has long pursued. The eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, for example, was flooded with Russians in the 1930s as the Soviet Union industrialized the region while starving millions of Ukrainian peasants to death in what the Ukrainian government and many historians consider a genocide.<\/p>\n<p>Mariupol is a symbol of Russian brutality and Ukrainian resistance during a siege in the early weeks of the war that destroyed swaths of the city, including the smoke-billowing Azovstal steel works. Real-estate agents tout the city\u2019s newly-clean air.<\/p>\n<p>Russia conquered Mariupol in a brutal onslaught that killed thousands of people and devastated the Ukrainian port city\u2019s housing stock.Mass displacement and destruction has thrown open Mariupol\u2019s real-estate market.<\/p>\n<p>One new arrival, a Russian woman from Siberia, said she was dazzled by the bright orange of the sun when she first visited last year. She bought an apartment there needing only minor repairs and intends to retire there, fulfilling her husband\u2019s dream of living by the sea. For now, she said she would rent it out to a tenant\u2014a woman from Moscow who now lives and works in Mariupol.<\/p>\n<p>Oleksandr Nosochenko, a former Mariupol resident, said a Russian military service member had taken over his summer cottage by the seaside on the city\u2019s outskirts. As a man of military age, Nosochenko couldn\u2019t make the journey back to Mariupol to claim compensation himself, and his wife, who had endured Russia\u2019s siege of the city, refused to return there on principle.<\/p>\n<p>The Clock House, built in the 1950s, was one of the most coveted addresses in what had been a thriving city. A new clock was installed during repairs to the building\u2019s roof and facade in 2021, with a light show that then-mayor Vadym Boychenko hailed as a symbol of \u201cthe era of Mariupol\u2019s rebirth.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Months later, residents found themselves huddling in the basement as Russian forces besieged the city. In March 2022, a missile tore a hole in the Clock House, killing several residents.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s when we realized we had nowhere to go back to,\u201d said Pudak, who had escaped the city with her husband and three children days before, leaving the keys to her mother\u2019s apartment with a neighbor.<\/p>\n<p>Mass displacement and destruction threw open the real-estate market. While workers started clearing rubble, realtors snapped up property on the cheap from fleeing residents.<\/p>\n<p>Residents of the Clock House scattered across Ukraine, Russia and Europe, but some remained in the building\u2019s basement until a leak appeared in the summer.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the damage, residents hoped the building\u2019s historic value would ensure its preservation. In a master plan for Mariupol\u2019s redevelopment approved by Putin in 2022, the Clock House was marked for restoration.<\/p>\n<p>The bulldozers arrived toward the end of 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Residents watched helplessly as the building was torn down. Three diggers broke in the process, according to the head of the residents association Maria Tikhovskaya. \u201cThe house itself was fighting the demolition,\u201d she said in a video posted online. Satellite images show most of the building had been leveled by early 2023.<\/p>\n<p>Still, residents expected to receive apartments in the new building. A 2022 decree entitled them to be rehoused on the site of their former home.<\/p>\n<p>Unknown to them, however, the building had been allocated for redevelopment by a subsidiary of a company called Roskapstroy, which is owned by Russia\u2019s construction ministry.<\/p>\n<p>The reality began to sink in when they saw the floor plans and computer generated images of the new building on a Telegram channel that popped up in July 2023. It was several stories higher than the building they knew, and had a completely different layout. Instead of spacious two-bedroom apartments, it had been subdivided mainly into studios.<\/p>\n<p>Residents attempted to contact the developer, RKS Development, but were ignored. The developer instead opened a sales office near the site. Among the buyers was a real-estate agent from Mariupol, who reserved three apartments in the new Clock House. \u201cThere was a lot of interest,\u201d said the 28-year-old.<\/p>\n<p>Most of the other buyers he encountered were from Russia, he said.<\/p>\n<p>As for the former residents, he knew of their grievances but had little sympathy. If they wanted to keep living there, they could have put down a deposit like everyone else, he said. Nevermind that the price was about three times what residents say they were offered in compensation for their apartments.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s barely enough to buy a burial plot,\u201d said one resident.<\/p>\n<p>Even if they could have afforded it, many former residents objected on principle: Why should they pay the price for the destruction of Mariupol?<\/p>\n<p>Within a week, the apartments had sold out, the real-estate agent said. The bulk of the planned construction cost of 850 million Russian rubles, or around $10.5 million, was covered by future owners, according to a project disclosure statement from the developer. The U.S. sanctioned Roskapstroy and its subsidiaries for operating in occupied Mariupol later in 2023. The developer didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>The central avenue of Mariupol in the early months of the war, as Russian troops intensified a campaign that destroyed swaths of the city.Mariupol, a strategic port city, is a symbol of Russian brutality and Ukrainian resistance during a siege in the early weeks of the war.<\/p>\n<p>As construction work began, residents mobilized, appealing to official bodies in the so-called Donetsk People\u2019s Republic, the Russian name for the government it installed in eastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>In response, they were told the law had changed: Residents were no longer entitled to be rehoused on the site of their former homes, but anywhere within the city limits.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Elena Pudak\u2019s mother attempted to travel back to Mariupol to claim compensation for her apartment. She was denied entry at Russia\u2019s Sheremetyevo airport\u2014the sole legal entry point for Ukrainians seeking to return to occupied territories. There was no explanation, but Pudak suspects the authorities are trying to keep people with property claims out.<\/p>\n<p>With dwindling options, Clock House residents filed a lawsuit against the Donetsk People\u2019s Republic, arguing that their rights as newly minted citizens of Russia had been violated. In a letter addressed to Putin, they pleaded their case.<\/p>\n<p>There was no response, and late last year, the court ruled against them.<\/p>\n<figure> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/550x309.jpg\" alt=\"Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians\" title=\"Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians\"\/><figcaption>Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/550x309.jpg\" alt=\"Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians\" title=\"Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians\"\/><figcaption>Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/550x309.jpg\" alt=\"Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians\" title=\"Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians\"\/><figcaption>Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/550x309.jpg\" alt=\"Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians\" title=\"Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians\"\/><figcaption>Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure> <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/550x309.jpg\" alt=\"Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians\" title=\"Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians\"\/><figcaption>Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>       Get the latest headlines from US news and global updates from Pakistan, UK, Bangladesh, and Russia get all the latest headlines in one place with including Tsunami Warning Liveon Hindustan Times.                 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Sign In SKIP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Home E-Paper DPL T20 2025 Taylor Swift WWE SummerSlam 2025 India vs England Live HT Premium HT The Next Voice US News Games HTCity India World Entertainment Astrology Real Estate Trending Lifestyle Education Business Cities Latest News + 16 more HT The Next Voice US News Games HTCity ht100 India World Entertainment Astrology Real Estate Trending Lifestyle Education Business Cities Latest News Parliament Monsoon Session Shibu Soren Death Delhi Weather August Monthly Horoscope Bihar Election Photos Century of Leadership Web Stories Sports Bengaluru News Delhi News Mumbai News Technology Quickreads Daily Digest Following Games + 11 more Century of Leadership Web Stories Sports Bengaluru News Delhi News Mumbai News Technology Quickreads Daily Digest Following Games Home by Home, Russia Is Selling Occupied Ukraine to Russians WSJ Updated on: Aug 04, 2025 04:15 pm IST Kremlin-linked construction firms reap profits from redevelopment of housing destroyed by Russia\u2019s invasion. In a brochure, t..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14014,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tie-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13938"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14030,"href":"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13938\/revisions\/14030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skybeaconnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}