Russian authorities are actively reshaping the memorial landscape in the occupied territories of Ukraine, folding together heroes of World War II, Kyivan Rus, and participants in the “special military operation” into a single historical framework. Writing for Novaya Gazeta Europe, historian Yuriy Latysh argues that these projects are meant to present past and present wars as a continuous line and to reinforce the claim that these lands have supposedly always belonged to Russia.
On November 2, 2025, occupation authorities in Donetsk opened the “In Memory of the Defenders of Donbas” memorial at the Donetsk Sea cemetery, listing figures from separatist formations, including Mikhail Tolstykh, Arsen Pavlov, Vladimir Zhoga, Olga Kachura, and Alexander Zakharchenko. On the same day, a sculpture of Zhoga was unveiled in Volnovakha.
A day earlier, a reconstructed memorial complex on the Mius River was opened in Krasny Luch. The Soviet-era site was expanded with images of a warrior from the time of Prince Igor and an SMO fighter, as well as a triumphal arch and a T-72 tank. At the ceremony, Kremlin official Sergei Kiriyenko said the renewed memorial linked 1185, 1941–1943, and 2022–2025 as stages of a shared history of Donbas and Russia.
In the author’s view, the idea of the “continuity of generations of defenders of Russian land” has become the core of Russia’s memory policy in the occupied territories.
A central role in this process belongs to the Russian Military Historical Society, headed by Vladimir Medinsky. Its branches were established in the self-proclaimed DPR and LPR and later in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. The organization oversees the construction and reconstruction of monuments and runs events aimed at shaping a Russian identity and russifying public space.
Among the clearest examples, the author cites the restoration of the Saur-Mohyla memorial in 2022, the reconstruction of the Ostraya Mogila complex in Luhansk in 2023, and the opening on May 2, 2025 of a Mariupol monument describing the city’s capture in 2022 as a “liberation from Nazis.” Latysh also notes that even monuments to actors, scholars, and other cultural figures in the Kherson region serve as a softer instrument for symbolically tying the “new regions” to Russia.