"I'm your neighbor, Volodya. Your apartments have been sold. Call me -- it's urgent."

When that message reached Svitlana Kolisnichenko and her family in May 2024, it confirmed their worst fears about the property they left behind in Crimea after moving to Kyiv.

Since the initial illegal Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014 -- and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 -- hundreds of buildings, homes, and other properties in Crimea have been seized by Russian authorities, according to international rights observers.

In Kolisnichenko's case, they learned that a former Ukrainian soldier who was now a Russian citizen was living in their three-room apartment without their consent. He was also registering his children and wife as residents there.

The new tenant was certainly not paying the Kolisnichenkos' rent.

"I think our neighbor, Lyudmila, and her husband, Vitaliy, gave him the keys," Kolisnichenko said. "She must have started renting out our apartment or something."

She says she only found out about this when Volodya called her to tell her that Lyudmila "was letting strangers into the apartment, including military men."

"In my building, where we used to live, there are already seven such apartments. It turns out this is something of a mass phenomenon," Kolisnichenko said.

According to rights organizations, the seizure of properties belonging to Ukrainians who oppose Russian occupation has been systematic and on a mass scale.

Those like Kolisnichenko who refused the offer of Russian passports have been a frequent target, it seems.

"We were against Russia's policies -- that's why we didn't take a passport, that's the only reason," Kolisnihenko said. "I had the full right to get a passport and my mother is in Russia, but I didn't want to. I didn't like this aggression."