Russia Builds Coercive State Apparatus in Ukraine’s Occupied Territories

Russia Builds Coercive State Apparatus in Ukraine’s Occupied Territories

Executive Summary:

• Since 2022, Russia has replicated its federal administrative architecture in the occupied territories of Ukraine, seeking full legal, economic, and political integration by January 2026.
• The Kremlin established courts, prosecutors’ offices, security structures, tax and migration services, property registries, and social funds, all connected to federal digital oversight systems.
• These structures bolster Russian oversight and control, deepen residents’ dependence on Russian institutions, legitimize wide-ranging property seizures, and make future reintegration with Ukraine nearly impossible.

In October 2025, the Russian government finalized the full integration of all occupied Ukrainian regional administrations into its federal digital monitoring platform—the Governor’s Dashboard. This system allows the Kremlin to track budgets, personnel performance, construction progress, and administrative compliance in real time (Government of Russia, October 31).  This recent move places the occupied Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts under the same performance metrics used across the Russian Federation. They are increasingly under the Kremlin’s tightened, authoritarian grip, which is supported by administrative personnel imported from Russia since 2022 (Radio Svoboda, September 29, 2022).

The Kremlin-led digital transition coincides with broader efforts to institutionalize Russian governance across Ukraine’s occupied territories. Since the outset of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russia has pursued an administrative annexation of occupied Ukrainian territories. In 2023, Russian authorities announced a transition period until January 2026 to fully incorporate the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), as well as the occupied parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, into Russia’s legal and governance system (TASS, September 29, 2023). To this end, they have introduced a series of regulatory and institutional changes to replicate the Russian state across these regions. Specifically, the Kremlin has deployed courts, prosecutors, the Federal Security Service (FSB), Rosgvardiya units, tax offices, migration structures, property registries, and social funds throughout the occupied regions.

Russian authorities have implemented over 50 federal laws and 1,700 regional legal acts for the occupied territories, along with 500 new regional decrees on administration, property transfers, and municipal governance (DumaTV, October 25, 2023). The Kremlin’s objective is to enforce a coercive and subservient bureaucratic system that will fully replace Ukrainian governance and make the political annexation irreversible.

The Kremlin has also facilitated the introduction of constitutions for the so-called DPR and LPR, as well as charters for the occupied parts of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, institutionalizing regional governments, parliaments, and bureaucracies aligned with the Kremlin (Russian State Duma, December 16, 2024). During the transition period, the Kremlin reorganized the wartime military-civil administrations into Russian-style regional governments headed by acting governors and supported by local cabinets (RBC, October 3, 2022; Fedpress, October 4, 2022). Legislative assemblies and regional governors were formally elected in 2023, institutionalizing the Kremlin’s administrative hierarchy across the four occupied regions (Realnoe Vremya, September 24, 2023).

Judicial integration has been central to the Kremlin’s strategy. As of November 2025, the Kremlin has established an efficient network of supreme, regional, and arbitration courts across all four territories, as well as garrison and district courts overseen by Russia’s High Qualification Board of Judges (DumaTV, October 25, 2023). As of 2025, there are 100 courts across the four regions, with 570 federal judges, to ensure that all legal disputes, including property conflicts and criminal cases, are adjudicated under Russian law (Pravo, February 20).

The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office launched regional branches in all four territories by late 2022, while the FSB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rosgvardiya, and the Investigative Committee have established permanent presences by reassigning personnel from other Russian regions (TASS, November 15, 2022). Together, these institutions enable the Kremlin to ensure efficient political control, suppress resistance, and cope with the growing legal and security apparatus.

Moscow has also actively worked to strengthen its fiscal and administrative grip over the occupied regions. In March 2025, Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Kolokoltsev stated that 32 State Traffic Safety Inspectorate units and 106 migration offices were fully functional in the occupied territories (Interfax, March 5). In particular, the Kremlin’s active efforts indicate its determination to enforce passportization and integrate all personal data on drivers and vehicles into Russian national databases to ensure compliance and alignment with other Russian regions. Since 2023, the Russian Federal Tax Service has launched over 60 offices across the occupied territories, including inspectorates and administrative branches, to provide residents and companies with access to Russian tax infrastructure, business registration, and support measures under Russian law (TASS, August 15, 2023). The Kremlin has also expanded small-business registries through simplified procedures, special tax regimes, and subsidies to new regions, along with incentives and expanded subsidy programs to ramp up economic integration with Russia (TASS, July 10, 2023; Nezavisimaya gazeta, October 30).

In 2024, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin announced that property and land registration in the occupied territories must operate on the same basis as in any Russian region (Government of Russia, September 12, 2024).  The Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre, and Cartography has deployed branches throughout the occupied territories and incorporated them into the Federal State Information System of the Unified Real Estate Register, adding over 1.3 million properties to the registry and processing around 240,000 applications via interagency electronic exchange (Government of Russia, September 12, 2024). As of November 2025, the agency has extended extraterritorial registration to 39 Russian regions, allowing property owners from the occupied territories to submit documents at multi-functional centers across Russia (RBC, October 1).

The Kremlin’s approach facilitates large-scale re-registration of Ukrainian-owned properties as Russian assets while supporting decrees on “abandoned property” and “federal integration,” which give occupation administrations the right to expropriate housing and enterprises and transfer them to Russian citizens or state corporations (UNN, July 5, 2024; RBC, October 23). Since 2022, more than 40,000 Ukrainian companies have been re-registered under Russian law, many functioning as mirror entities controlled by Russian managers (Youcontrol, December 16, 2024).

Furthermore, the Social Fund of Russia has been fully operational in the occupied territories since 2023, taking over pensions and welfare payments from the previous administrations (TASS, December 4, 2023). As of 2025, approximately 1.5 million residents in the occupied territories receive pensions and benefits under Russian law, while local entitlements from previous administrations are temporarily maintained to prevent reductions (TASS, April 5). As access to these benefits increasingly depends on Russian paperwork, including citizenship and registration status, welfare systems become another tool of the Kremlin’s coercive control and coercive annexation (Meduza, October 22).

Despite the comprehensive enforcement of the Kremlin-dominated administrative system, Russian officials face staff shortages and limited access to water, electricity, and other critical services. For instance, since 2023, the healthcare system has faced severe staff shortages of up to 40 percent (UNN, July 30). Many Ukrainian doctors refuse to collaborate with Russian occupation authorities (Suspilne, March 19, 2023). Russian medical specialists, furthermore, are often unwilling to relocate despite higher pay, as they are aware that they are perceived as occupiers (Espresso, July 30).

Russian occupation officials are also facing staff shortages in the education sector. For instance, in October 2025, the occupation administration in Kherson oblast reported a shortage of about 600 teachers in local schools (Most.ks.ua, September 9). Most remarkably, to fill leadership and teaching posts, Russian occupation administrators have had to appoint individuals with no relevant qualifications, including laboratory assistants and janitors (UNN, April 23, 2024).

More worryingly, there have also been continuous issues with water and power outages across the occupied territories, affecting thousands of residents. For instance, in September 2025, power outages occurred in occupied parts of Kherson oblast due to shortages of qualified energy staff (NV, September 8). In the so-called DPR, a deepening water crisis has been unfolding since the summer, with the Russian authorities implementing new schedules that have worsened the condition of networks that had received only minimal repairs since the occupation (Radio Svoboda, October 6).

Since 2022, Russia has built a state apparatus to replicate and extend its system of coercive control and oversight by establishing judicial, tax, migration, and property institutions, as well as recently introduced digital oversight systems in occupied territories. The Kremlin’s ultimate objective is to deepen residents’ dependence on Russian institutions, legitimize wide-ranging property seizures, and make future reintegration with Ukraine nearly impossible. For Ukraine and its Western partners, reversing this hostile and comprehensive administrative takeover will necessitate not only de-occupation but also the dismantling of the Kremlin’s complex bureaucratic ecosystem aimed at binding the occupied territories to the Russian state for the long term.