By Elsie Kamsiyochi
Russia is transforming the Ukrainian territories it has occupied into what officials now openly call “Novorossiya,” or “New Russia.” Through a massive wave of construction—railways, highways, ports, and industrial sites—Moscow is rapidly binding these regions into its own economic and military systems.
A months-long investigation using satellite imagery, public records, trade data, and dozens of interviews reveals a sweeping campaign designed to make the occupied territories nearly impossible to return to Ukraine in any future peace deal.
The story of these territories begins with images circulating online: burning trains, ruptured rail lines, and thick columns of smoke drifting across plains.
Ukrainian partisan groups have repeatedly sabotaged the new Russian infrastructure, targeting rail hubs and supply routes. But according to fighters like “Orest,” a Ukrainian operative operating behind Russian lines in Donetsk, such efforts are only a dent in an enormous system. “The network is hundreds of kilometres long,” he explained. “We cannot stop everything.” While Ukrainians try to disrupt, Russia pushes ahead at extraordinary speed.
Construction crews, heavy machinery, and engineering brigades move across hundreds of kilometres of occupied land. The Kremlin portrays these regions as historically Russian—and is spending as if it intends to keep them permanently.
Investigators found that Russia is investing hundreds of millions of dollars each year into these territories, significantly more than it allocates to many of its long-established regions.
While much of this infrastructure directly supports military objectives—transporting troops, fuel, ammunition, grain, and minerals—it also serves a longer-term goal: absorbing Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson into the Russian state. Satellite data shows at least 2,500 kilometers of newly built or upgraded transportation routes across these territories and nearby Russian regions between 2022 and 2025. Former battlegrounds are being reshaped into new logistical corridors.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has drawn parallels to Russia’s post-2014 development in Crimea, calling the buildout “a facade” for militarization. “Crimea never became a modern resort,” he said. “Everything was built for military purposes—and now they are doing the same, only faster.”
President Vladimir Putin has described these occupied territories as ancestral Russian lands needing reconstruction. In a recent national address, he boasted that more than 6,000 kilometers of roads had already been laid.
Russian budget records confirm the ambition: about $11.8 billion has been earmarked for top-priority development projects in the occupied territories from 2024 to 2026—nearly triple what around 20 other Russian regions receive combined.
For the Kremlin, annexation is not just political; it is becoming physical, infrastructural, and engineered to be irreversible.
The largest and most ambitious of these projects is the Novorossiya Railways, a sweeping network of new and reconstructed tracks designed to link Russia directly to Crimea and the occupied regions while bypassing vulnerable routes like the Crimean Bridge.
Construction began in 2023, with the main line expected to stretch 525 kilometers across four occupied regions. Satellite imagery shows steady progress, including a newly completed 60-kilometer section between Novoselivka and Kolosky in Donetsk.
A Ukrainian intelligence source monitoring the project said Russia is deliberately building the railway deeper behind the front lines to keep it out of missile range, ensuring uninterrupted movement of weapons and equipment. Russia has already spent an estimated $425 million on the railway since 2023.
Parallel to the railway is a vast road-building campaign. Russia is constructing the Novorossiya Highway, which will form the Ukrainian link in a 1,400-kilometer “Azov Ring”—a massive superhighway looping around Russia, the occupied territories, and Crimea. More than $214 million in highway contracts have already been awarded, with another $123 million planned for 2026. Completed sections already connect Taganrog to Manhush, and a large bypass is being carved around Mariupol, a city Russia is rapidly reshaping after capturing and heavily bombarding it in 2022.
Ukrainian officials observing the construction argue that it far surpasses Russia’s efforts in Crimea after 2014. “Crimea was their training ground,” said Olha Kuryshko, Zelenskiy’s representative for Crimean affairs. “Now they are building faster, spending more, and aiming higher.”
Infrastructure on the Sea of Azov is also being remade. The ports of Mariupol and Berdiansk—once vital hubs for Ukrainian metals and grain—are being revived under Russian control.
Satellite images from mid-2025 reveal a brand-new, silver-domed port structure roughly the size of a football pitch, alongside large coal mounds ready for export and dredging operations to deepen navigation channels. By late 2025, at least 18 cargo ships had left these ports, many heading to Turkey and other destinations.
This marks a dramatic shift from 2024, when no commercial vessels entered or exited the ports. Dock workers said grain and coal exports have risen significantly, though still below pre-war volumes.
Alongside roads, rails, and ports, Russia is expanding its resource extraction. Between 2022 and 2025, at least 508,500 metric tons of coal and related products, worth about $13.2 million, were exported from occupied regions, mainly to Turkey and the UAE. The most notable extraction project is the Bobrykivske gold deposit in Luhansk, auctioned by Russia for $9.7 million to Alchevskpromgroup, a firm linked to the Russian mining company Polyanka. The site holds an estimated 1.64 tons of gold, worth nearly $260 million. Satellite images show active excavation—machinery tracks, disturbed terrain, and equipment staging areas.
Analysts warn that if Moscow can make these operations profitable, the occupied territories could increasingly finance their own occupation. “This could become profitable for Moscow,” said Karolina Hird of the Institute for the Study of War.
All of this points to a strategy far larger than wartime logistics. While peace proposals and ceasefire talks continue internationally, Russia is reshaping the physical reality of the territory it controls.
The scale, speed, and expense of its construction spree suggest that Moscow intends these areas to remain part of Russia indefinitely, regardless of diplomatic outcomes. Ukrainian officials note that the infrastructure being laid—rail lines, highways, ports, and mines—is not just civilian development. It is the skeleton of a long-term war economy.
On the ground, Ukrainian fighters watch from the shadows as new roads and railways take shape despite their attempts at sabotage. Their consistent conclusion is stark: Russia is not simply occupying these lands; it is transforming them.
The territories are being remade piece by piece into something designed to last, built not only for the present conflict but for the future Moscow envisions.
Source Reuters