A Ukrainian partisan group said Russia is moving foreign labor migrants into homes left by fleeing Ukrainian residents in occupied parts of southern Ukraine and Crimea, a practice it warned could amount to a war crime.
The Atesh movement said in a statement that its agents have documented a surge of foreign nationals, mainly from Cuba and India, arriving in occupied cities including Melitopol and Yevpatoriya.
The group said the newcomers are being recruited for low-paid municipal jobs, promised Russian citizenship and housed in properties labeled “ownerless” after local residents fled the occupation.
Atesh alleged the policy serves multiple aims: addressing acute labor shortages as residents leave occupied areas; altering the ethnic composition of the population in favor of groups seen as more loyal to Moscow; and preparing to use migrants in upcoming votes to bolster support for Russia’s ruling party.
The group said the resettlement effort is coordinated by Oksana Mekhanicheva, a senior official in the Russia-installed housing administration in Crimea. The claims could not be independently verified.
International humanitarian law prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its own civilian population into occupied territory or forcibly displacing local residents. Atesh said those responsible would be held accountable.
In 2025, Ukraine’s resistance movement has moved far beyond the traditional image of partisan warfare.
What once appeared as isolated acts of sabotage in occupied territories has evolved into a coordinated, nationwide network operating not only in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, but deep inside Russia itself.
Combined with close coordination with Ukraine’s security and defense forces, the underground movement’s growing reach has made resistance activity a persistent and destabilizing – but sometimes overlooked – threat to Russia’s 2025 war effort.
In an exclusive interview, Kyiv Post spoke with “Selim,” a coordinator of the Atesh resistance movement, as well as “Yevpatoriy,” an underground agent operating in Russian-occupied Crimea.
Both described 2025 as a turning point, defined largely by the collapse of the long-standing myth of a “safe Russian rear.” According to them, Russian forces no longer feel secure, not even far from the front.
“If earlier the occupier felt threatened only in Crimea or near Donetsk, today they flinch at every sound in the Moscow region or Volgograd. Atesh has become a truly all-Russian network,” one of them said.