Authors: Karolina Hird

Data cut off: 11:45 am ET, July 16

ISW's Russian Occupation Update tracks the activities that occur in the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. This product line replaces the section of the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment covering activities in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.

To read ISW’s assessment of how Russian activities in occupied areas of Ukraine are part of a coerced Russification and ethnic cleansing campaign, click here.

Click here to view our Russia-Ukraine interactive maps.

Click here to view our special reports since 2025.

Russia continues its systematic persecution of women from occupied Crimea. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed on July 14 that it opened a criminal case against a 24-year-old woman from occupied Stary Krym for “treason and preparation of a terrorist attack,” and published footage of the woman allegedly confessing that she had prepared an assassination attempt against a Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) officer in May 2025. Ukrainian human rights sources, including the Crimean Tatar Resource Center (CTRC), identified the woman in the video as Crimean Tatar Khatidze Buyukchan, whom the FSB detained without explanation on May 8. ISW reported at the time that the FSB detained Buyukchan without reason, switched off her phone, and denied her family information about her whereabouts and condition for over two months, and CTRC noted that this is the first time the FSB has publicly confirmed her detention since her arrest. CTRC assessed that the FSB coerced Buyukchan to make a fabricated confession on camera for propagandic value. Russian occupation officials are weaponizing spurious or overblown “treason” charges to prosecute residents of occupied Crimea, increasingly including women, for perceived anti-Russian or pro-Ukrainian behavior, as appears to be the case with the charges against Buyukchan. The FSB’s treatment of Buyukchan is also consistent with Russia’s longstanding persecution of the Crimean Tatar community for fabricated “extremist” charges.

Key Takeaways:



• Russia continues its systematic persecution of women from occupied Crimea.

• The Crimean occupation administration has reportedly reaped over $28 million in profit from the seizure and nationalization of Ukrainian property in occupied Crimea in the first half of 2025, compared to the $61 million it made off nationalization profits in the first two years of the full-scale invasion.



• Pro-Russian Cossack formations operating in occupied Ukraine are facilitating the militarization of occupied territories and their integration into the Russian Federation.

• The Donetsk Oblast occupation administration is co-opting youth in order to implement Russia’s occupation policies. Youth-focused organizations in occupied Ukraine set multigenerational conditions for the perpetuation of Russia’s occupation by raising and training the next generations of occupation administrators from within the local Ukrainian population.

Click Here to Read the Full Update

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