A Ukrainian hotel owner, Denys Katyukha, has secured a $5.1m judgment against Russia after a court found that the country had effectively seized his hotel resort and apartment in southeastern Ukraine following its invasion.
Katyukha, 49, who fled to Germany after Russian forces occupied his home in Melitopol, spent 11 months pursuing a civil case against Moscow over the seizure of his properties, including the Admiral Hotel on the Sea of Azov coast.
Russia did not participate in the proceedings and is unlikely to pay the compensation awarded.
“For now, I am the victim – a Don Quixote fighting windmills,” Katyukha said.
The Admiral is among hundreds of hotels and resorts Russia has seized or identified for seizure along the Sea of Azov since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to a Reuters investigation of Russian and Ukrainian property records.
Reuters found that Russian-installed authorities in the occupied Zaporizhzhia region had designated more than 7,000 residential and commercial properties as “ownerless,” including 521 hotels and resorts.
At least 77 of the facilities are now controlled by Russian businesses, with 20 under Russian state entities.
The seizures have been linked to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated ambition to transform occupied Ukrainian territories into Russian lands.
The properties also provide Moscow with opportunities to strengthen its control over the regions and generate revenue for its war effort, according to Karolina Hird, a national-security fellow at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs described Russia’s property laws in occupied territories as “a legal smokescreen” for what it called state-sponsored theft, arguing that the regulations strip Ukrainians of ownership rights unless they acquire Russian citizenship.
Katyukha said he learnt in September 2022, while living in Germany, that armed men had entered his hotel and declared it “ownerless.”
His father, who remained in the area, was reportedly given three days to establish ownership of the property.
However, Katyukha said the occupation authorities refused to recognise Ukrainian passports and property documents, telling his father, “These are documents from a nonexistent country.”
The Admiral Hotel was built on a 3.7-acre plot of land in the seaside village of Kyrylivka. Katyukha began construction in August 2014 with a few bungalows, gradually expanding the facility into a 100-room resort featuring three bars, a restaurant, a shop, a swimming pool and a children’s water-play area.
Kyrylivka attracted two million tourists in 2021, according to Ukrainian authorities, before Russian forces occupied much of the Zaporizhzhia region.
That year, the Admiral received a local “Hospitality of the Year” award.
On September 28, 2022, nine days after armed men seized the hotel, a Russian-controlled commission appointed a new owner for the facility.
Corporate records identified the new owner as Resorts of Zaporizhzhia Region, a Russian state entity.
The organisation reported net revenue of 65.7 million roubles, approximately $800,000, in 2023.
It was renamed the Zaporizhzhia Region Investment Development Agency in April, according to corporate records.
As Katyukha rebuilt his life in Germany and taught hospitality courses remotely for a Ukrainian university, the hotel resumed operations under Russian control.
Social media videos posted by Russian influencers in 2025 showed visitors enjoying its rooms, beach cabanas and gardens.
Despite the resort’s reopening, tourism in the occupied Azov region remained significantly below pre-war levels.
A tourism-development plan published by the occupation authorities in March indicated that only 150,000 people visited the region in 2025, representing five per cent of the tourist numbers reported for Kyrylivka and Berdiansk in 2021.
Katyukha said he was particularly angered by the hotel’s relaunched website, which closely resembled the original version he had created, except that its language had been changed from Ukrainian to Russian.
In mid-2023, he began documenting his financial losses, producing a 3,000-page compilation of receipts, bank statements and other records with the assistance of his lawyer.
The assessment included the costs of hotel equipment, furniture, construction materials and machinery.
After nearly a year of litigation, presiding Judge Mykhailo Smokovych awarded Katyukha $5.1m in damages on April 30, ruling that Russia’s actions amounted to “de facto expropriation.”
Katyukha has also submitted a claim to the EU-backed Register of Damage for Ukraine, headquartered in The Hague, which collects evidence of losses caused by Russia’s war.
More than 195,000 people have filed claims with the register, which expects to receive between six million and eight million applications.
However, no funding mechanism has been established to pay the compensation claims.
Katyukha acknowledged that Russia might never pay him during his lifetime, but said he hoped his grandchildren would eventually benefit from his pursuit of justice.
