Terror, Collaboration and Resistance
Russian Rule in the Newly Occupied Territories of Ukraine
Abstract
In the territories occupied by Russia since February 2022, the occupiers are using the same instruments they used in Crimea and Donbass in 2014. They cut the population off from Ukrainian sources of information, spread their propaganda, and forcibly bring the educational system into line with their own. They instrumentalize humanitarian aid, pay social benefits and wages in roubles, issue Russian passports, and link the use of services and rights to Russian citizenship. They recruit collaborators from the local elite and resort to repression and open terror. The Crimea and the so-called people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk provide the starting point for the administrative and military incorporation of the newly occupied territories into Russia. While prospects for the liberation of the occupied territories by military means remain hazy, one thing is clear: the longer Russia remains there, the harder it will be for Ukraine to take them back.