Russia builds luxury apartments on Mariupol's destroyed neighborhoods, displacing Ukrainian residents

Halyna Artemova taught English in Mariupol for nearly four decades. She lived at Metallurgy Avenue 87, in an apartment block she knew the way you know your own hands. In March 2022, a Russian missile struck the building. She was wounded by shrapnel. She left the city with her elderly mother and her son, and she has not returned.

Next door, at number 85, lived Yevhen Sosnovsky, a photographer, and his wife. They had spent twenty years there, renovating every room themselves, furnishing it piece by piece. They planned to grow old in that apartment. When the missile hit, fire consumed the building. Russian troops forced the residents out. No one was permitted to gather food or clothing. Sosnovsky was shot. He fled with his wife and mother-in-law.

Today, where Sosnovsky's apartment block stood, there is a parking lot. Where Artemova lived, a new building rises. A Russian contractor called Su-2007 cleared the destroyed structures along Metallurgy Avenue and erected high-rise apartment blocks in their place. The complex is called Leningradsky Kvartal—fifteen buildings, twelve to fifteen stories each, positioned ten minutes' drive from the sea. One- and two-room apartments sell for between 7.5 million and nearly 10 million rubles, roughly €104,000. Three-room units go for more than 10 million rubles. New buyers receive discounts up to twelve percent.

The buyers are not Ukrainians. They are Russian security personnel, military officials, logistics workers, and people seeking coastal property they cannot afford elsewhere in Russia. Russian banks offer mortgages at two percent annual interest—the rate fixed for the entire loan period—but only to Russian citizens. The maximum loan is six million rubles, with a minimum deposit of two percent required. In online neighborhood forums, residents discuss furniture delivery from Russia, school choices for their children, and the requirement that all documents submitted be of Russian origin. Some complain about renovation noise. No one mentions the people who lived there before.

According to the United Nations, ninety percent of Mariupol's buildings were damaged or destroyed during the 2022 siege. Tens of thousands were killed. Artemova remembers neighbors: a man and his son who died fetching water; a woman crushed beneath concrete; a family killed on the first floor of another building. Many residents who survived but lost their homes were told by occupying authorities to vacate their apartments. They were promised new housing in exchange. None of the former residents of Metallurgy Avenue received an apartment in Leningradsky Kvartal. Those who had lost everything could not afford a mortgage. Instead, they were placed in accommodations on the city's outskirts or in hostels.

Property prices in Mariupol have risen by a third in a single year, driven by the coastal location and the influx of Russian buyers. Economist Vyacheslav Shiryaev notes that the construction quality is poor—contractors cut corners everywhere—yet prices remain high. Residents have insured their mortgages against war risk. If their building is destroyed, they will not repay the loan. They will, however, lose the apartment.

Artemova now lives in Kyiv. She will not return to register her property under Russian occupation law. She is not certain she would be permitted to enter the zone. Ukraine offers no compensation for property lost in occupied territory; the government cannot assess the damage without access. Sosnovsky feels the same. One former resident of Metallurgy Avenue, who lived there for decades and watched his child take first steps in an apartment that no longer exists, described the city this way: "In the center it's still OK, but if you go just a little to the left or right it smells of death." He said of the new buildings: "They're building their shiny new houses on what used to be a graveyard."

Artemova remembers the ordinary life that was taken. "We'd go to market, knew where to buy what; we'd have a coffee, bump into a school friend with her dog and say hello." That life is gone. The city where she spent forty years now belongs to people she will never know, in apartments built on the rubble of her home.