The law states that individual entrepreneurs established in four eastern and southern provinces of Ukraine – Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson – must register with the Unified System of Legal Entities of Russia no later than June 30.
Companies must do this by December 31 of the following year.
Also, companies in Donetsk and Lugansk must comply with Russian law from the same date.
The Kremlin declared in October that it was clear the government had to deal with the issue, as there were “abandoned assets” in Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizjia and Kherson that “certainly cannot stand still”. .
“We have to implement them. Someone has to add them to their balance sheet,” presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at the time.
“This is completely normal because it is the territory of the Russian Federation,” he said, adding that Russia does not fully control any of the four provinces.
“There were owners in Crimea who abandoned their properties when the peninsula became Russian. Many, but not all, were called to claim their rights and register their companies under the jurisdiction of the Russian Federation,” he said.
So, he added, “there is already a precedent” in this regard.
“However, property has owners, and under Russian law, everyone has the right to claim their rights over this or that property, but already based on the fact that it is the territory of the Russian Federation”, Peskov clarified.
Russia launched a military offensive in Ukraine on February 24, seizing some of the territory it declared annexed but not recognized by the international community, which condemned the invasion and decreed unprecedented sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s regime.
