Realignment of economies and political administrations has been hampered by local resistance, including assassination attempts against Russian-appointed officials.
“It’s more of a propaganda show,” said Konstantin Skorkin, an expert on eastern Ukraine politics. “Integration depends on the progress of Ukraine’s military and Russia’s ability to maintain control over the territories it has declared annexed.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin had said the unification of Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions with Russia was “the will of millions of people” when he announced the annexation in a highly choreographed Kremlin ceremony. But many observers characterized the move as a desperate political gamble amid a series of battlefield upheavals.
The Kremlin’s land grab, which came after widely disputed referendums in the regions, was rejected by Kyiv and widely condemned by Western countries and international organizations, including the United Nations.
Apart from a flurry of activity after the announcement of annexation — and Russian state media using maps showing Ukrainian territory as part of Russia — there has been little since then about significant steps toward political or economic integration.
In addition to developments on the battlefield, one of the major obstacles appears to be the absence of skilled administrators.
Kherson’s deputy head of the Moscow-based administration, Kirill Stremousov, said last month that the new positions would be filled by locals, but there are apparently few people queuing up for the roles.
Kremlin-appointed leaders of occupied Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin at an annexation ceremony. Michael Metzel / TASS
While some officials likely prefer to avoid publicity, the websites of the pro-Kremlin administrations in Kherson and Zaporizhia list only 10 officials working in the two regions — an area with a pre-war population of 2.5 million.
A major reason for this reluctance to publicly acknowledge cooperation with Russian-appointed authorities is likely a series of assassination attempts against Moscow-based officials, which – though less frequent than in the summer – are still a regular occurrence.
The head of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) said on Saturday that judge Alexander Nikulin — who sentenced three foreigners to death in June — was wounded in an attack. And former Russian security service officer Alexei Katerinitev, who worked in Kherson’s Kremlin-appointed government, was killed in September by a rocket attack.
Representatives for Stremusov and Russian-appointed governors Vladimir Saldo and Yevgeny Balitsky all declined requests for comment from The Moscow Times.
Widely seen as a way for Putin to redefine the war in Ukraine as an existential struggle following advances by the Ukrainian military, the annexations have so far failed to reduce military pressure on Russia’s Armed Forces.
Ukraine said last month it had liberated 1,620 settlements previously held by Russian forces and is continuing to press forward with a counteroffensive around Kherson. Independent news site Meduza reported on Monday that the Kremlin was planning how to back Kherson to the Russian public.
The most problematic territories to be incorporated will be those seized by Russia after it launched its invasion of Ukraine in February, expert Skorkin told The Moscow Times.
Evacuation of people from Russian-occupied areas of the Kherson region. EPA / TASS
“In the Donetsk and Luhansk regions this integration process has been going on since 2014,” Skorkin said, referring to Russia’s long-standing military and financial support for rebel territories in eastern Ukraine.
“All local laws in these quasi-democracies were written with Russian legislation in mind, which was taken as a model, so technically it’s not that difficult to adapt everything,” he said.
Much of what is known about Russia’s plans for the four occupied territories comes from laws published at the time of the annexation, which mandate the completion of integration into Russia’s “economic, financial, credit and legal systems” by the end of 2025. .
But despite the fact that the laws on the occupied Ukrainian territories are 40 pages each, they offer little indication of the details of the actual integration process.
“Everything is described in a very general way,” said Russian political scientist Yekaterina Schulmann.
Little has been accomplished so far in aligning these areas with Russian law, according to publicly available information.
Local governments, legislative assemblies, courts and prosecutors’ offices in the annexed regions are not even officially registered in the required official Russian databases, independent media outlet Verstka reported last week.
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Assassinations of Russian-based officials in occupied Ukraine are on the rise
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And Russia’s Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov only on Monday signed an order to officially open prosecutor’s offices in the four occupied regions.
However, some integration processes have begun since Russia seized the territories in late February and March. For example, Moscow began handing out Russian passports to locals in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics in May and to people in Kherson and Zaporizhia in June. Steps have also been taken to introduce the Russian ruble and oblige locals to switch to Russian mobile phone providers.
An obvious model for Russian administrators grappling with the task of absorbing occupied territories is Crimea, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
“We are grateful to have the opportunity to address them [Crimea] for advice and support,” Luhansk official Rodion Mirosnik said last month.
According to Schulmann, using the Crimean model “would be the most logical thing” for officials working on integration.
“But we are talking about areas of military activity, and the war is not in our favor,” Shulman told The Moscow Times. “What this has to do with reality remains an open question.”
