Life Under Occupation
Where Food Security Begins: One Ukrainian Farm’s Story
When Hryhorii Tkachenko returned to his farm, the first thing he saw was his life’s work broken into pieces.
Dead cattle lay across the farmyard and fields. Machinery had been damaged or destroyed. Sheds were torn open. A modern milking unit, once the centre of daily work on the farm, was ruined. The fields that were supposed to be prepared for wheat, corn, and sunflowers were unsafe — mines and unexploded missiles scattered across the land made it impossible to enter safely.
How Russia campaigns in occupied territories for enlistment in its armed forces
In the temporarily occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, Russia conducts forced mobilisation while actively campaigning for local residents to join its armed forces. These efforts aim to replenish the Russian military with personnel for combat against Ukraine. To achieve this, pseudo-authorities employ various influence methods and communication channels.
Read on for an overview of how residents are encouraged to enlist, alongside recruitment methods and propaganda tools currently deployed.
Contract or jail: how Russia mobilises residents of the occupied Zaporizhzhia oblast into its army
When 17-year-old Andriy (name changed for security reasons) from the occupied part of the Zaporizhzhia oblast was stopped for a phone check, he never expected it would lead him into the Russian army.
Read on to find out how the occupiers conduct recruitment and forced mobilisation.
How Russia is driving Ukrainians out of their homes
"You wouldn't recognize the city anymore. It doesn't feel like ours—it feels foreign. The people are different. You hear either a distinct Moscow accent or broken Russian. I no longer recognize Mariupol," says Olha.
How war destroyed sport in eastern Ukraine
Until recently, east of Ukraine was one of the country's important sporting hubs. Donetsk’s Shakhtar regularly played in the Champions League, the Donbas Arena hosted Euro 2012 matches, and the region’s football, ice hockey, and basketball clubs competed at the highest level. Thousands of children trained at sports academies, dreaming of stepping out onto major stadiums.
“Not Yours – That's Why You're Seething”
In one sketch from the Mavka Diaries – anonymous, illustrated testimonies from women under Russian occupation, published through the underground network “Angry Mavka” – a masked woman holds up a scrap of paper reading, in Russian, Не твоя, вот и бесишься: not yours, that's why you're seething.
Passport coercion
When Mykola (not his real name) arrived in hospital in the Russian-occupied territory of Ukraine with an acute hernia, he expected doctors to schedule surgery. Instead, he was told that treatment would not be possible until he became a Russian citizen.
The hopeless fight for confiscated property in Ukraine’s occupied territories
When Olena (surname changed) fled Melitopol in southern Ukraine in early March 2022, she packed clothes for her two children, locked the front door of their two-story home, and left a spare key with a trusted neighbour.
Eating last.
In Oleshky, a town in the Kherson region occupied since the first day of the full-scale invasion, the winter of 2025–2026 answered a question most of Europe had not faced in generations: what happens when supplies stop arriving?
Food under control.
After the occupation of Mariupol, Russia changed not only the authorities, documents and flags in the city. It dismantled one of the basic systems on which people’s daily lives depend: access to food.
Seized Fields, Stolen Grain
In the summer of 2022, in the village of Mangush, 25 kilometres from Mariupol, local residents were selling bottles from Vyna Pryazovia, a Ukrainian winery based in the area. The wine, from the 2020 vintage, was being sold for next to nothing—even though it had won five gold medals at an exhibition in Verona in 2021. Amid the chaos of the occupation, some bottles were taken and sold by people from the surrounding area. The winery itself was looted and vandalised: equipment disappeared, and Russian soldiers later used its large metal tanks as shooting targets.
Trust is the main currency of wartime
On my screen is a figure I cannot easily place: hood pulled low, face in shadow, voice run through a synthetic filter into the flattened tone many of us know from short-form videos. It's hard not to smile at the distortion, and impossible to forget the risk behind it. Then the connection drops — a small, familiar symptom of life under occupation, where infrastructure and surveillance make communication fragile.
When the gap between reality and television grows too wide, propaganda loses its grip.
Oksana, a woman from Mariupol, is a nurse. She was born in Ukraine and has lived in Mariupol all her life, although her family originally comes from Russia’s Samara region. So, although Oksana held a Ukrainian passport, she considered herself Russian.
‘Salt’s not salty, sugar's not sweet.’
The Russian occupation of Ukraine’s eastern regions started back in 2014. During this time, the Russians have tried to oust everything Ukrainian from all spheres of life, and the food sector is no exception. Now, instead of Ukrainian goods, Russian products or those imported from countries ‘friendly’ to Russia lie on market stalls and supermarket shelves. People complain about poor quality and miss their favourite products from Ukrainian manufacturers, but they have little choice.
War and trade
For over 30 years, Ukraine has been developing trade and economic relations with the Republic of Kenya and Malaysia. Agricultural and metallurgical products traditionally held an important place in Ukrainian exports to these countries. Enterprises and the agricultural sector of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts made a significant contribution to building this export capacity. However, the war which Russia started in 2014, followed by the full-scale invasion, led to the loss of production capacity, the destruction of supply chains, and a shift in Ukraine's foreign trade structure.
This piece examines the role Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts played in Ukraine's economic cooperation with Kenya and Malaysia, how the war affected the region's export potential, and what impact it had on Ukraine's trade relations with these countries.
Russian film and TV replace Ukrainian media: how the enemy rewrites identity under occupation
When cinemas close down in occupied territories, it is often viewed as another consequence of war — ruined buildings, power outages, or lack of cinemagoers. However, operational venues have transformed: they no longer show Ukrainian or international releases, serving instead as platforms for propaganda and brainwashing.
Information vacuum
For many families living in the Russian-occupied territories, education is no longer only about learning. It has become one of their last remaining connections with Ukraine.
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