Occupation authorities in Luhansk move to adapt historic buildings for modern use, authorize seizure of 'ownerless' real estate

The Ministry of Culture in the so-called 'Luhansk People's Republic' has approved Russian procedures for carrying out work on cultural heritage sites in the annexed territory, The Insider has found. The rules cover the repair and restoration of monuments, as well as their 'adaptation for modern use.' At the same time, the 'People's Republic' has a separate mechanism that allows real estate to be declared 'ownerless' and transferred to the authorities. Monuments are not excluded from this procedure. Order No. 214 of the 'republic's' Ministry of Culture was published on Sept. 7 (despite being dated Aug. 25). Under the order, the ministry will issue permits for repair, restoration, conservation, and emergency stabilization work on monuments of federal significance. The document also provides for the 'adaptation of cultural heritage sites for modern use,' meaning that a historic building can be given a new function — for example, housing a restaurant, hotel, or offices — provided that protected elements of the monument are preserved. To obtain a permit, an applicant must confirm their rights to the building. If these are registered in Russia's Unified State Register of Real Estate (EGRN), the Ministry of Culture will be able to request this information directly from the Rosreestr register used by the occupation authorities in Luhansk. How Ukrainian real estate becomes 'ownerless' After the annexation, Russia began integrating the captured regions' real estate into its own registration system, and a separate Russian law recognizing Ukrainian property documents has been in effect since October 2025. Such documents can serve as grounds for registering ownership in the EGRN, though some of them are reviewed by special commissions. In particular, a commission must determine whether the Ukrainian authority that issued the document had the right to do so. At the same time, 'Luhansk People's Republic' authorities are searching for property that can be declared 'ownerless.' For non-residential buildings, a separate procedure has been in effect since July 2025. One indicator that a property falls into this class is the absence of ownership records in the EGRN. Once such a property is identified, officials must check Russian registries and determine whether the right to the building was registered before the annexation. If no owner is found, the property is registered as 'ownerless.' Historical buildings and other cultural heritage sites are not listed among the exceptions. In short, the absence of a record in the Russian EGRN does not in itself mean a Ukrainian owner will lose their building. However, Russian authorities themselves still ultimately decide which documents to recognize and who is considered the owner of real estate in the occupied territory. The scale of this practice is clearly visible in housing. In February 2026, Luhansk occupation head Leonid Pasechnik said the authorities had identified roughly 17,000 apartments that showed signs of being 'ownerless.' The initial criterion was non-payment of utility bills for more than five years. After the lists were published, 5,000 owners came forward to assert their rights while the remaining 12,000 apartments remained under review. Pasechnik said such housing could be transferred to municipalities. As of the end of April, the city of Luhansk alone had 7,900 apartments showing signs of being 'ownerless.' City head Yana Pashchenko, however, acknowledged that apartments sometimes end up on such lists by mistake, and after inspection the procedure was discontinued for 470 units. How similar processes unfolded in Crimea Crimea offers another case of how the revision of pre-existing rights can work in practice. After illegally annexing the peninsula, Russia formally recognized property documents issued by Ukrainian authorities and ownership rights that arose before March 2014. But Russian authorities then began using the courts to overturn decisions by Ukrainian bodies that had transferred land and other real estate into private ownership. One such case was reviewed in July 2026 by the European Court of Human Rights. The case Bazhenov et al. v. Russia and Ukraine combined 12 complaints related to plots of land in Sevastopol. In 2009–2010, Ukrainian authorities transferred state land to private citizens for the construction of dachas. Before the annexation, these decisions had been reviewed by Ukrainian authorities and administrative courts found them lawful. Additionally, some owners managed to register their rights in the Russian registries after the annexation. Nevertheless, in 2015–2017, the Sevastopol city administration, its property department, and the prosecutor's office moved to seize the plots through Russian courts, claiming that the land had been privatized illegally under Ukrainian law — allegedly because it belonged to the forest fund and could not be transferred into private ownership. In the end, Russian occupation authorities concluded that both the original Ukrainian decisions to transfer the land and all subsequent confirmations of owners' rights to it were invalid. The Balaklava District Court agreed and ordered the plots returned to the state without compensation to the owners. The owners' appeals were unsuccessful despite the fact that the ECHR ruled the Russian government's actions constituted an unlawful deprivation of property. These were not isolated cases. The ECHR ruling cites a report by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights noting that as of September 2017, the list of property in Crimea that had been 'nationalized' by the Russian occupation authorities included 4,618 state and private real estate assets. In Sevastopol, 13 companies and 30 real estate properties were nationalized between February 2015 and July 2016. Materials from the Crimea Platform, also cited by the ECHR, describe at least 3,800 land plots seized in Crimea and Sevastopol between 2014 and 2017 after Russian authorities revised decisions by Ukrainian bodies to transfer land to owners. Another telling example is the story of Novy Kuchuk-Koy, an early 20th-century mansion in the village of Parkove on Crimea's southern coast. Part of the historic estate's property was sold to a private company under Ukrainian law in 2003. After the annexation, Russian authorities challenged the owner's rights, and in 2018 a court ruled the estate to be the property of the Republic of Crimea. Buildings, the park, staircases, pools, a fountain, sculptures, and other elements of the complex passed into regional ownership. The authorities later put it up for auction, and at the end of 2019 the estate was sold to a company linked to Gazprom Dobycha Orenburg for almost 2 billion rubles ($23 million). After that, problems arose for the owners of the nearby Parkove resort, which had been built and put into operation before the Russian annexation. The Kremlin-controlled Yalta city administration sought to have the multi-story building declared an unauthorized structure, and Russian courts ordered the apartment owners to demolish it at their own expense. The owners linked what was happening to Gazprom's interests, since the resort ended up sandwiched between properties associated with the Russian state-owned company. Monuments of Luhansk Region The occupied territory of Luhansk Region contains 4,473 sites that local authorities classify as cultural heritage objects, according to an inventory conducted this past summer. As of June 2026, the Russian government had already granted federal status to more than 30 of them, including the house in Luhansk where writer and lexicographer Vladimir Dal was born, an early-19th-century estate on Dalya Street that later housed the Young Spartak pioneer group, the early-20th-century estate complex of industrialist Kazimir Mstsikhovsky in Seleznivka, a country estate built in 1772 in Oleksandrivsk, and the building of a former mining school from the early 20th century in Lysychansk. The list also includes numerous memorial sites: the Young Guard complex and the Unconquered monument in Sorokyne, the Slava memorial in Rovenky, the Fighters of the Revolution complex in Luhansk, and monuments to Vladimir Dal, Kliment Voroshilov, and Alexei Stakhanov, among others. The list includes not only memorials and monuments in the conventional sense, but also buildings, estates, and entire architectural complexes that could potentially be used for other purposes. For example, the Mstsikhovsky estate has the status of an ensemble, while the 18th-century country estate in Oleksandrivsk includes a main house and several outbuildings.