At least 650,000 Russians have arrived in Crimea since the beginning of the occupation and after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to figures released by the peninsula’s occupation authorities.
However, the actual number of Russian citizens now living in temporarily occupied Crimea could be as much as 200,000 higher, according to Denys Chystikov, Deputy Permanent Representative of the President of Ukraine in Crimea. Chystikov shared his assessment during a broadcast of Vechir.LIVE .
Chystikov said that as of 2014, around two million Ukrainian citizens lived in Crimea.
“After 2014, and after 2022 - especially since the illegal mobilization in September 2022 - about 100,000 Ukrainians have left the temporarily occupied territory of Crimea,” Chystikov said.
He noted that even the so-called authorities of Crimea officially confirmed that by 2025, 650,000 Russian citizens had been relocated to the peninsula. He raised doubts about the completeness of this number, suggesting it may not account for military personnel and other “categories of individuals.”
Chystikov added that Crimea is now experiencing a fuel shortage, although there is not yet a full-scale humanitarian crisis.
“It’s too early to talk about a humanitarian catastrophe; all the measures currently taken by the Ukrainian military are directed specifically at Russian armed forces. Any discomfort experienced by the local civilian population is directly related to the inaction of the occupation authorities, who truly don’t know what to do,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian army is continuing efforts to neutralize the Russian military’s ability to use occupied Crimea as a base. On the night of June 11, four bridges leading to temporarily occupied Crimea in Kherson region were attacked .
On June 7, a drone strike damaged a bridge in the Chonhar area of Russian-occupied Kherson, a key route linking Russian forces with occupied Crimea. Following the attack, occupation authorities closed the “Dzhankoi” checkpoint and rerouted traffic through “Armiansk” and “Perekop.”
The same bridge was struck again on June 9. According to Vladimir Saldo, the infrastructure suffered further damage, forcing authorities to halt traffic.
On June 10, Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation announced that the bridge was effectively destroyed, accusing the Russian side of trying to conceal the true state of critical infrastructure in the occupied territories.
