Annihilation by Intent: Russia's Occupation Policy in Ukraine Since 2022

The book reveals the mechanisms of the Russian occupation. What kind of regime has Russia established since the beginning of its occupation and annexation of Ukrainian territory? What does the occupation mean for those affected, how do they experience Russian control, and how do they cope with the imposition of Russian order? What kind of everyday practices, tensions, and contradictions emerge? The ultimate aim of Russia’s occupation policy since 2022 is the destruction of Ukraine’s distinctive political, social, linguistic, and religious identity. Occupation means forced displacement, destruction, theft of property, systematic repression, regular human rights abuses, denigration, the imposition of Russia’s imperial war narrative, control of the public sphere, the Russification of society, the economy, and polity, and forcing people to adopt humiliating survival strategies. The experience of war and occupation entails shock, violence, torture, and sexual abuse as the ‘new normal’. Russia intentionally destroys the social fabric and solidarity of Ukrainians.

Dr. Andreas Heinemann-Grüder is Professor of Political Science at the University of Bonn.

Dmitry Durnev is an independent journalist in Ukraine who has been working for Open Democracy, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Spektr Press, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. He was the former editor-in-chief of the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets in Donbass.

Julia Friedrich is a research fellow at the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi). Her research has focused on security dynamics in Russia and Ukraine. She also works on foreign influencing in the context of EU enlargement as well as German and European stabilization policy. Her work on Ukraine has covered Russia’s occupation practices since 2022 and, prior to the full-scale invasion, the impact of the Donbas war on social cohesion in eastern Ukraine and the reintegration of veterans into Ukrainian society. Until February 2022, she was a visiting fellow at the Razumkov Centre in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Sergey Savchenko, Lieutenant General of the armed forces of Ukraine, head of the Kyiv based Analytical Center for the study of hybrid threats; between 2014–16 he participated in Ukraine’s Anti-Terrorist Operation against Russian-backed separatist. In 2004–05, he was deputy head of the multi-national division South-Centre in Iraq.